Actually, defaulting from $VISUAL to vi and from $EDITOR to ex (or ed) is what -- strictly speaking -- makes sense. Remember what the difference between $VISUA

Actually, defaulting from $VISUAL to vi and from $EDITOR to ex (or ed) is what -- strictly speaking -- makes sense. Remember what the difference between $VISUAL and $EDITOR was intended to be. There's a whole range of places in Unix where there was, and even still is, a distinction between a line editor and a full screen editor. Consider, for just one example, the ~v and ~e commands in BSD Mail. Now enjoy the discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13113556 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13113556 .