Re: vi editor in ``fc´´ builtin

[Seth David Schoen]

Jamenson Ferreira Espindula de Almeida Melo writes:

> Conglatulations for the excellent software!
> 
> Why is ``vi´´ the ``fc´´ builtin's default editor?

I suppose it's an upgrade from ed, which is specified for this
purpose in the POSIX standard

https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/fc.html

There is a famous joke about how ed is the traditional standard
Unix text editor

https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.en.html

However, by the time of BSD Unix, where vi was first invented, users
were starting to lose their knowledge of ed.  For many users of BSD
and BSD-inspired systems, vi was viewed as a semiofficial successor
to ed (via the intermediate stage of ex).

I have no connection to this decision, but I think a likely explanation
would be "the other most plausible 'official' choice is ed, which fewer
users know".  An OS developer can easily override this default by
providing a value for EDITOR reflecting an OS-recommended default editor.

Since vi is in the POSIX specification and nano isn't, vi also
represents a more portable fallback default, since many more systems
are required to have it for standards conformance!

-- 
Seth David Schoen <schoen@loyalty.org>      |  Qué empresa fácil no pensar
     http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/        |  en un tigre, reflexioné.
  8F08B027A5DB06ECF993B4660FD4F0CD2B11D2F9  |        -- Borges, "El Zahir"