Ksh cursor keys (Was: who uses which shells)

[Lawrence V. Cipriani]

In article <1887 at mhres.mh.nl>, jv at mhres.mh.nl (Johan Vromans) writes:
> But WHY does ksh not allow cursor (=arrow) keys to be used? Vi does. Emacs
> does. Even VMS does it.
> Johan Vromans                              | jv at mh.nl via European backbone

I think there are at least two reasons for this, one - ksh is a big
program and adding in the terminfo/termcap functions to implement the
arrow keys would make it too big for some machines (even with only
one of the command line editors compiled in), two - Korn wanted to
make ksh independent of terminfo/termcap to reduce portability and
debugging problems.

I know of one person that changed ksh to implement this capability,
so it is possible.  Why is this such a desirable feature?  Just curious.

-- 
Larry Cipriani, AT&T Network Systems and Ohio State University
Domain: lvc at tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
Path: ...!cbosgd!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!lvc (weird but right)