Quote:
Originally Posted by DrJ
You're welcome, TerryP.
I've always just used "vi" on FreeBSD, but I wondered about whether "nvi" was installed. /usr/bin has both, but they are the same file size, and diff shows no differences between the files.
Are they the same? If so, why not just use a symbolic link and save a bit of disk space?
|
vi on *BSD should be nvi. vi was a victim of the 1993 agreement (I think), the source being kept by whoever had the copyright (wasn't BSD). So nvi (new vi) was written as a drop in replacement - Nex/nvi are intended as bug-for-bug compatible replacements for the original Fourth Berkeley Software Distribution 94BSD) ex and vi programs. (
manpage(vi)). So at least the three main BSD's (if not all) should be using nvi as their vi. (compare Linux which is usually elvis or vim-lite)
It just so happens that the source code for the original vi has been released under a BSD-like license. You can get it
here.