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Comment by sliverstorm | Hacker News Reader

In reply to the title, I have one thing that should convince certain people to learn vim.

Besides cat, pipes and grep, vim is the only useful editor (i.e. works in the command line over ssh) you can count on always being on every *nix machine. There are a very few it is not included in, but these do not have any other editors either.

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True, but if you have command line ssh access you could also use Emacs' Tramp Mode to transparently edit the files using your local editor.

Which is true for Vim as well, using the :e scp://host.com/path/to/file :)

vi yes, but vim is not always installed.

> There are a very few it is not included in, but these do not have any other editors either.

I'm curious: when have you come across an editor-less unix?The vi-less ones I've come across have generally had some bizarre substitute that uses wordstar keystrokes or something equally obscure...

You raise a fair point, though: knowledge of vi = knowledge of ed which will work even when vi won't (horrid slow link and/or broken terminal emulation).

most commonly rescue or pre-boot environments. A rescue environment without a text editor is severely hampered, it's true, but sometimes things other than config files need rescuing, and floppies are small.

I've come across ones with only "ed", but the last time I had that was 20-odd years ago. I would counter all unix (like) operating systems have an editor because I've never run across one without "ed" (and "sed").

Sad to say that vi/vim has not been installed on every *nix box I have used. Its not installed on freenas by default, which I have running on a box. My mind was blown when I realized it didn't have at least vi.

No, vi often isn't installed, e.g. on Linux ADSL routers. If there is one editor it will be ed(1), the one true editor. :) That's why everyone should know it. Besides, it is a bit easier to use ed blind to edit a file from a mental image of the file's contents than it is vi.

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