The original vi is a product of its time (and its time has passed) (opens in new tab)

(utcc.utoronto.ca)

6 pointsadunk1mo ago7 comments

7 comments

Sometimes something is a standard, not because it is the best, but because it is the thing that everybody expects and can trust to be there.

If you'd like to use another editor you can easily install it.

throwaway1501mo ago

Honestly I cannot imagine who expects the original vi and trusts vi to be there. Every Unix/Linux user I have met expects Vim and trusts Vim to be there. If there are users expecting original vi, they must be a very small minority.

chasil1mo ago

A standards-conformant implementation of vi is absolutely required to be present and conformant to standards if the platform is certified by POSIX.2 (or whatever name the standard uses these days).

The latest standard for vi (and the rest of the utilities) can be found here:

https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9799919799/utilities/

The standard for vi is specifically:

https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9799919799/utilities/v...

Yes, Microsoft, this means you!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_POSIX_subsystem

Microsoft's native UTF-16 really, really needs an editor that easily saves US7ASCII and UTF-8 correctly, both with LF and CR/LF. The native Windows tools are quite poor in getting this right.

1 more reply

rbanffy1mo ago

And we all know ed is the standard Unix text editor. If you want vim you should be able to install it.

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