4 ms·
vi is the lowest common denominator among *nix text editors. It's a huge advantage to know how to use it.
by 16s 15y ago
vi is the lowest common denominator among *nix text editors. It's a huge advantage to know how to use it.
- zerostar07 15y agono, in the sense that most other editors do not share its features. it's ubiquitous though.
- dextorious 15y agoActually it's not the "lowest common denominator" --perhaps you meant something like "the most prevalent". It both has lots of features other editor's don't have, and implements most features differently, so it's not like it's a subset of any other editor. Vi is only the lowest common denominator of the vi-clones family of editors (Vim et al).
- botker 15y agoI believe that award goes to ed, the standard UNIX text editor.
- dextorious 15y agoTrue.
- pessimizer 15y agoYes, it is, in the sense that it is a common factor across every *nix system that you may need to deal with. Emacs isn't going to be everywhere.
- tomjen3 15y agoVi isn't everywhere either, though it may be on more systems than Emacs. But almost any system is going to have ed installed.
- damoncali 15y agoPeople have been telling me that since I was in college ('93). I've still never used it for real.
- Splines 15y agoIt depends on where you work and what stack you worked on. As an intern working for Nortel we had HPUX machines, and vi was frequently used. These days at my current job it's an all-Windows stack, so I'm in VS all the time and don't really have a need for vi. It doesn't mean I don't miss it, though.
- bodyfour 15y agoNo need to miss it: http://www.viemu.com/ http://www.viemu.com/ It's a pretty impressive emulation, even has some vim features. That package was the only thing keeping me sane during a year spent in VS.