BBEdit instead of vi

gumse

gumse

Member
A good line to have in your /usr/share/init/tcsh/aliases is:

alias bb 'open -a "/Volumes/app/BBEdit 6.0 Folder/BBEdit 6.0/BBEdit 6.1 for OS X"'
(substitute your own BBEdit path)

Then you can edit text files with the command "bb filename" from Terminal. Sure beats vi.

NB! If you have started BBEdit earlier you might have to Quit to make sure it starts as the current user (if you have su'd to root in Terminal for example) otherwise you may not have r/w privileges.
 
BBEdit is a GUI not a CLI program ;)
(at least I think that is the case in OS X as well)

In the CLI I prefer EMACS ;)



Admiral
 
Well, to GUI or not to GUI... :)

Of course BBEdit is a GUI program, but thats kind of the point. But when you start it from the CLI, is it still 100% a GUI ?? :)

I prefer BBEdit over emacs for 90% of the work i do. Kind of nice to write "bb fancy.pl" , edit the file, save , quit, rather than all the ESC-Ctrl stuff that I never seem to remember...

But then again, who am I to judge...
"Only pawn in game of life" :)
 
Part of the reason for using OS X is the Mac GUI support on top of UNIX, and the ability to run Mac applications.

If I wanted to stay at the command line and run vi or emacs, I could stick with FreeBSD or Linux. Since I have a Mac with Mac applications like BBEDit, why not use them?


I use BBEdit from the command line, and think it works great.
 
One of the things you can do from the command line is to run things as root. So not only can you launch BBEdit, but then BBEdit will have full access to read/write to the entire file system.

To do this use the same comman as above, but do it logged into the Termainal as root...

root# open '/Volumes/[drive]/[path to BBEdit]/BBEdit 6.1 for OS X/BBEdit 6.1.2 for OS X'
 
I find myself (dont hit me) more of a pico person. I'm acquinted with VI, but I find it annoying.

As for a gui solution, I find OSX textedit quite good. :]

Used BBedit on OS9 and earlier. For some reason I didnt really like it. Maybe because it was an overpriced text editor. :X Simpletext was good enough for me! :X :D

 
I was hooked on BBEdit the first time I did a complex Regular Expression Search/Replace on 100's of files... in many nested sub-directories... filtered by filename. I've never used anything but BBEdit since.

Plus all of the commands are mappable to keys... and it is a breeze to save files to Unix/NT/MacOS all with the correct line breaks.

About a year after I started using it they added the ability to open files directly over an FTP connection. All of the other Mac and Windows text editors have been copying this feature ever since. (Dreamweaver probably does this feature best...)

Yeah... vi! I've used it, but never with my vi mug too far away...

vi_mug_large.jpg
 
I absolutelly, positevelly, 100000% hate vi :p

I prefer emacs ;) (when in command line of course).


Now listen to this...this is FREAKY....

I was prepearing a study guide for my CS final in M$ word. I tried to save it and I did control-x control-s LOL I had to think a little before i realized that I had to do command-s to safe LOL :p

I seem to have associated CS with emacs lol.... oh well... back to reality ;)
 
Well if you 100000% hate vi, try 'ed' (father of 'sed').

Line editors - 10000000000000000000000% hate them :)
 
I would try ed but I want to hold on to my mental well being :D

I had to do some vi commands for a take home test and I could enter into vi, do my tests on the commands but I did not know how to exit it so I just closed the terminal LOL :p


I absolutelly, positivelly , detest line editoooors :D
 
I would agree with devinci. Pico is way simpler to use than vi (at least for people who are not used to vi) and has some useful tools like search and copy/paste. :p
 
LOL @ pico :p :p

Is pico even bundled anymore with unix distros ???
I havent tried it. I just use emacs when in command line :p
 
I love vi. It's great for quick in and out changes.

Had an almost fatal encounter with ed a few years ago, I still have nightmares about it. *shudder*

"You can have my VI when you pry it from my cold dead hands" - Me
 
joe (joe's own editor) is the easiest cli editor i've ever seen. it always keeps a 2-3 line status area at the top of the screen to list commands.

 
This is great! Now I can edit all my config files in a gui interface (personally I like Pepper and for cli I like pico). Also I am not sure if it has been mentioned or if everyone knows this and I am just stoopid, but you can drag and drop into the terminal and it writes the path to whatever you dropped in.
 
I forgot one of the other reasons I loved BBEdit... it always has been fast to launch and to open/save files... (Something you'd definately expect from a Text Editor!)


Well that was true until they carbonized v 6.x for OS X. I really hope that this was just a fast/sloppy port and this is not the way all Carbonized applications are going to be. Also I really hope that they issue an update soon that makes this faster.

The speed it is now makes me consider reverting to the non-carbonized 5.1.1... or pico (no mug needed) or vi. Ugh!
 
i logged in as root then tried the command, but then it didn't work after i closed the window on which i had made the alias.

and then i decided to slot in a file at /usr/(whatever)/tsch/aliases but it refused to budge because of not enough credidentials. hmm.
 
Originally posted by devinci
I find myself (dont hit me) more of a pico person. I'm acquinted with VI, but I find it annoying.

As for a gui solution, I find OSX textedit quite good. :]

Used BBedit on OS9 and earlier. For some reason I didnt really like it. Maybe because it was an overpriced text editor. :X Simpletext was good enough for me! :X :D
Click to expand...

huh. this is kinda late. but... i agree with you totally. I find vi and emacs equally irritating. :p
 
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