Re: [PLUG] VI without a swapfile?

Funny, as I was reading this thread, edlin was the first thing that popped into my mind. Not sure if that's good or not.

Having said that, 'ed' should work, if it is actually installed on the "minimal" system. It's required by SUS/POSIX, but depending on how formal and minimal the file system is trying to be... 'ed' is even scriptable, though that sounds like overkill in this case. Remember that 'ed' is a line editor designed for teletypes, so it's even more stone knives and bear claws than 'vi'. (And I say that with affection, since I *like* vi. :)

You will likely need a cheat sheet, see the man page on basically any Unix or Linux system installed in the last, oh, 35 years or so... :-) Or start at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_%28text_editor%29.

I used 'ed' for recipe 17.14 Editing a File in Place in the _bash Cookbook_ precisely because (in my 'stat' tests at the time) it really does overwrite the same file, it's scriptable, and it's always there.

Ha, just for fun I went and looked and I still have c:\windows\system32\edlin on XP. I don't find it on Win7, though you can get a FreeDOS version with support for long file names now. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edlin is short and interesting and just proves there is *nothing* more permanent than a temporary solution.

Later,
JP
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