VI(1) vs. the world
Chris Torek
chris at umcp-cs.UUCP
Sat Oct 11 19:43:26 AEST 1986
>>>... I really like to be able to say ... "40a -<ESC>" to be able
>>>to make an 80 column dashed line.
>In article <3772 at umcp-cs.UUCP> I wrote:
>>Vi has a major advantage over Emacs here.
In article <523 at epimass.UUCP> jbuck at epimass.UUCP (Joe Buck) replies:
>I'm surprised at you, Chris. An old Emacs hand like you should know
>that ESC 8 0 - makes an 80 column dashed line, in four keystrokes
>instead of the five that vi requires. I use this all the time. In
>Emacs everything is a command, so in a sense you're always in command
>mode, rather than always being in insert mode. '-' is just the
>"insert a -" command.
Indeed, ESC 8 0 - inserts eighty `-' characters. That was not what
the original poster (>>>) wanted: 4, 0, a, SPACE, -, ESC, inserts
40 pairs of ` -' characters:
----------------------------------------
vs. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Incidentally, `-' is not an `insert a ``-'' command', since it has
to do the appropriate magic to construct negative arguments if
typed immediately after ESC. This cannot always be ignored: e.g.,
^U k inserts four `k's, but ^U - inserts nothing, instead setting
the prefix argument to -4. ^U 4 -, however, inserts four `-'
characters. The exact details may vary according to your Emacs
variety.
(Nice try, Joe. I *do* make mistakes, but this was not one.)
--
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 1516)
UUCP: seismo!umcp-cs!chris
CSNet: chris at umcp-cs ARPA: chris at mimsy.umd.edu
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