Re: Shell command history (was: Useless Use Of Regexes)

In comp.os.linux.misc, Lawrence D'Oliveiro  <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Wed, 9 Apr 2025 13:26:48 +0100, Geoff Clare wrote:

On 4/8/25 9:16 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

Seems a bit dumb, having to go into insert mode every time you
actually want to type a command.

That's not how it works.

 
But that’s how the vi/vim editor family works. Are you saying that a
command-line editor that is supposed to work like those editors doesn’t in
fact, emulate them entirely faithfully?

It is not advertised as an "entirely faithfully" emulation. In fact, the
crappy vi-mode in early versions of bash is why I ended up preferring
ksh, which I still use to this day when available.

It is advertised as "vi-style command line editing interface" in recent
bash and readline man-pages, and "a vi style in-line editor" in ksh's
manpage. One of the key differences, which is very helpful for shell
usage, is every line starts in insert mode.

Other things missing from "vi-style" (or "vi style") are the : commands
and most multiline movement commands, eg H, L, M (, ), {, }, [[, ]], and
gg. But G does work to go to oldest item in history.

Elijah
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overall it works better than the vi included with busybox