Editors

Now that the user is familiar with some of the commands, UNIX standard editors will be introduced. The first one is ed, a line editor used on line-mode terminals. For terminals with full-screen capability, vi is more suitable.

NOTE that all UNIX editors use buffers as work areas in which they manipulate the files. The original file is updated only when the buffer is written to the file, which is done by the user: if the user simply ``quits", only the changes prior to the last write will be reflected in the file!!! For that reason, you must first save the file, then exit the editor.