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

[James Laver]

On 10 May 2009, at 11:09, Bruce Richardson wrote:
>
> 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.

So even on debian netinstall which ships as little as possible, I  
have /bin/nano. I'd rather use that than ed.

> 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.

Okay, I'll give you that I only have /usr/bin/vi on here. But I do  
have nano (it's not a symlink either). I've never (not even in the  
days of pico) come across a distro that doesn't ship at least one  
editor in /bin. I'm not saying they don't exist, I just asked you  
which distros you were thinking of.

Ironically the whole reason I hadn't bothered to check where 'vi' was  
pointed to was because I'm used to it residing in /bin. As I've  
started using debian again after a long hiatus, I now find that's in / 
usr. It doesn't really affect me.

> I think you should read with more care before commenting.

I wasn't wrong and I was asking a question (which you neglected to  
answer, did _you_ not read _my_ mail carefully enough?). Perhaps you  
should come up with something to back up your statements?

--James
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