Input Line Editing

[Bob Pendleton]

>From article <6192 at bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>, by tytso at athena.mit.edu (Theodore Y. Ts'o):
> One problem with putting the input line editor (ile) where it is is that
> you don't always want to be able to step back through ALL the lines that
> were typed to that tty.  For example, if you started editing a file
> using /bin/ed (or some other interactive program), and typed hundreds
> of "n", "p", "i", "a", and "s/foo/bar/" commands, when you exited to 
> the shell, do you really want to step through those hundreds of /bin/ed
> commands?  The shell isn't going to do anything useful with them.  Want
> I want to do is step back to the last *shell* commands, not necesarilly
> the last line I typed.

If ed sets cbreak or raw mode then ile won't record any of the
characters going either direction.

On the other hand in some programs you might like to have a history
and line editing capability but not have that history in your "global"
history. So, just invoke "ed" as "ile ed" or even alias "ed" to "ile
ed". Then while you are running ed you have a local history that goes
away as soon as you exit ed. But, the input line editing stays
consistent. 

I haven't done this yet, but it has been suggested that ile should
save and restore its history buffer using a file whose name
is derived from the name of the program that was run under ile. That
would give you a program specific history the persists from invokation
to invocation of a program. 

> Now, you might say that this is a "inconsistent user interface".  But I
> find that having the shell step through only shell commands is a lot
> more friendlier to the user.  I use a csh with a line editor hacked in,
> and I've been very satisified with the result.  This is the csh which
> is in use at MIT Project Athena, and our users in general like it a lot.

I can't force my users to use one shell. I don't have time to hack several
shells. Especially since I don't think I have source for all of them.
And I can't count on having shell source in the future. I can count on
having the source to ile. We aren't all still in academia. 

> 					- Ted
> =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
> Theodore Ts'o				mit-eddie!mit-athena!tytso
> 3 Ames St., Cambridge, MA 02139		tytso at athena.mit.edu
> 			If it's for real, it isn't!

		Bob P.-- 
Bob Pendleton @ Evans & Sutherland
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