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My experience with Plan 9 is from my first employment at Kreatel Communications and doing basic admin of the nCUBE/C-COR VOD servers that some of our customers

My experience with Plan 9 is from my first employment at Kreatel Communications and doing basic admin of the nCUBE/C-COR VOD servers that some of our customers used in production and we had for integration testing. The OS those servers ran, Transit, was apparently based on Plan 9. Coming from a Linux and Solaris background the shell was quite basic to say the least! I remember on some instance that we for some reason wanted to bypass the web UI and hand-edit some file and the only editor available was some variant of ed... But with a steady hand when doing such things and software upgrades etc it worked really well and was quite capable for the time (2006).

vezzy-fnord 12y ago
You're referring to sam, I presume? The commands are similar to ed, but the overall design is radically different. Then of course, Plan 9 has one of the most versatile text editors out there: Acme. The shell itself is rc(1), which cleans up the mess significantly from Bourne shells.
- RBerenguel 12y ago
  I quite like sam, from what I've tried so far. I think it's an interesting take on ed (but I much prefer acme) I still have "learn basic ed (or sam)" as a far-away goal (always pushed down my todo list, since knowing the commands is not enough: using them is what gives power)
  - jdp 12y ago
    This is the best writeup I've seen so far on getting comfortable with ed: http://blog.sanctum.geek.nz/actually-using-ed/ http://blog.sanctum.geek.nz/actually-using-ed/
    - aidos 12y ago
      That was great, thanks! I'd never played with ed before but as a vim user it was pretty easy to follow without having to think too much. I knew it was an ancestor but never knew it was so similar.
    - RBerenguel 12y ago
      Yes, that post is my source of ed-ness, practical knowledge. Very good, well-written. But ah, the time to apply everything and the will to force me to use it!

vezzy-fnord 12y ago

You're referring to sam, I presume? The commands are similar to ed, but the overall design is radically different. Then of course, Plan 9 has one of the most versatile text editors out there: Acme. The shell itself is rc(1), which cleans up the mess significantly from Bourne shells.

RBerenguel 12y ago
I quite like sam, from what I've tried so far. I think it's an interesting take on ed (but I much prefer acme) I still have "learn basic ed (or sam)" as a far-away goal (always pushed down my todo list, since knowing the commands is not enough: using them is what gives power)
- jdp 12y ago
  This is the best writeup I've seen so far on getting comfortable with ed: http://blog.sanctum.geek.nz/actually-using-ed/ http://blog.sanctum.geek.nz/actually-using-ed/
  - aidos 12y ago
    That was great, thanks! I'd never played with ed before but as a vim user it was pretty easy to follow without having to think too much. I knew it was an ancestor but never knew it was so similar.
  - RBerenguel 12y ago
    Yes, that post is my source of ed-ness, practical knowledge. Very good, well-written. But ah, the time to apply everything and the will to force me to use it!