[Gllug] ed vs emacs/vi, was: ed vs emacs, was: OpenMoko Neo Freerunner

[Bruce Richardson]

On Sun, May 10, 2009 at 11:01:10AM +0100, James wrote:
> On 10 May 2009, at 09:11, Bruce Richardson wrote:
> 
> > And sometimes there's a reason why none of them are available, like  
> > the
> > one Alain mentioned or something simpler and harser, like them all  
> > being
> > somewhere in /usr and that partition having been unmounted.
> 
> That's why the FHS says your mount command should be in /bin.

I'm assuming that /usr can't be mounted because of a problem that
requires some work to fix.  If you need to be editing files to fix it,
you are now stuck because the editors you are familiar with are all on
that partition.

> 
> > Most Linuxes do not install anything that provides /bin/vi by  
> > default, so at
> > this point ed and sed are what you are stuck with.
> 
> Personal experience of Linuxes says they always come with either vi or  
> nano. Even debian.

I specified '/bin/vi'.  If you look at the standard packages that
provide vi or vim (or even nano), they all place the binary in /usr/bin
and so are no use in a rescue situation where /usr may not be available.
There are packages you can install to provide an editor in /bin (in
Debian, look for the elvis-tiny package) but if you have not taken this
precaution then you are now limited to ed and sed.

> 
> I may choose to install emacs instead, but the point is you always  
> have *something*.

I think you should read with more care before commenting.

-- 
Bruce

If the universe were simple enough to be understood, we would be too
simple to understand it.
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