LawrenceWoodman

Glad you like it. You're right it would work on the C64 as well, although it isn't really as useful due to the C64 having so much more memory.

It's mainly that I just prefer programming in assembler on the 8080/8085 - it's easier to fit the instruction set neatly in my head. The 8085 is also much easier to emulate and I like the ease of interfacing it with hardware. This preference tends to colour everything I do on CP/M.

Turbo Pascal is great and I love the fact that it uses the Wordstar key combinations. I wish that there was a version for 8080 but I understand why they went with the Z80. Borland went on to create Turbo Modula-2 for CP/M which was very similar to TP but with lots of language enhancements and faster execution time of the resulting binaries. However, it was released quite late in 1986 and quickly withdrawn.

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.

It's funny that you should say that because VI/VIM, another modal editor, is my editor of choice on Linux, with JSTAR second.

However, lately I've been thinking of writing a modal editor for Linux based on CP/M's ED. I know there is ED and EX on Linux but I prefer ED on CP/M and have been wondering where I could take that idea and possibly replace some of my use of VIM.

Honestly, I really do love it. I've used plenty of other editors on CP/M and now that I've got used to ED I just don't find them as quick or often as powerful as ED. That doesn't mean that they don't have extra features that can be useful, but considering how little I use those extra features I think ED comes out in front for me. I think the accompanying video demonstrates quite well how easy it is to use.