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Comment by hilbert42 | Hacker News Reader

Why do you prefer ED on CPM to that on UNIX/Linux?

I think it's generally cleaner, more elegant and the combining of commands on a line is easier. I love that you can create macros such as:

  MNCPM^Z0TT6Z-3DICP/M^Z

This will go through a file bigger than memory, display each line containing 'CPM', pause and then replace it with 'CP/M'.

However, there are things I like in ED/EX such as the regular expressions.

Right, thanks for that. I've not used either in a while and when I did there was a long separation between using one then the other so it's a bit lost to memory (same for Vim).

Despite my earlier criticism of ED, I've always liked CP/M's command line structure and switch parameters. For example, here's one I think I remember: PIP B:=A: [V O] (I hope that's right, it's been a long time.)

I wonder if that elogence is Kildall's work, as I've never been sure whether GK just took the PDP/DEC command stuff verbatim or whether he altered some items.

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