where to do line editing?

[Ian Moor]

In  <3827 at sequent.UUCP> davest at sequent.UUCP (Dave Stewart) says:


>>Terminal input editing belongs where the input is being done,
>>namely the terminal.

>	I was talking with a coworker once who described how badly this
>was implemented in VMS.  In particular, the tty driver in some version
>of VMS allows one to move around on the history list, much as one is
>able to do in ksh, ie, strike a particular character and the previous
>line typed is displayed.  (One might see history manipulation as a form
>of input editing).

>	One example of where this failed in VMS was that one could run
>a "lock" program, type a passwd at it, and walk away.  Some other user
>could then walk up, step back in the history and see exactly what
>password was typed, and then be able to "unlock" the terminal.

The only way that I can think this might happen is that the lock program
did a read with echo followed by a clear-screen instead  of a read without
echo. (I think lock programs are antisocial and rarely secure.)

I think line editing should be as near  the front end as possible, we use
tcsh with its line editing and I get frustrated when using another program
like dbx and not being able to use the same keys to get back previous commands.
After all the terminal driver already understands several special keys --
what would life be like if each application had to do its own input editing ?
Lets see this is ed so I type ^H, oops its sed I should have used delete ...