LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Tim Peters <tim@smug.adelaide.edu.au>
  To  : Andrew Burrow <alburrow@cs.adelaide.edu.au>
  Date: Wed, 16 Jun 1999 10:42:01 +0930 (CST)

Re: C++ with linux

On Wed, 16 Jun 1999, Andrew Burrow wrote:

> Yes!  For some reason it seems to have become a relatively unknown
> fact that emacs _is_ an integrated development environment.  Properly
> configured emacs provides:

Yes .. But I might have to step in and say that vi(1) is quite a good
development environment as well (properly configured). It's just a little
harder to learn. At first. Since this is Linux, vi = vim (vi iMproved)[*]:

>   -	desktops
> 	automatcially reopen the last session --- one per directory

While not supported directly, vim has a very powerful builtin scripting
language that can do this. ":h eval.txt"

>   -	syntax highlighting for each of the source code file types

Vim has syntax highlighting for over 100 languages, and it's easy to add
your own. ":h syntax"

>   -	automatic code indentation, which is itself a helpful
> 	syntactical check

Builtin for C and C++, definable for others. ":h indent"

>   -	compile from within emacs
> 
>   -	step through compilation errors in editable source code

":make" will run make and jump to the line of the first error. ":h make"

>   -	debug from within emacs and step through editable source code

Ok, well if you can do that in vi, I don't know how :)

>   -	read info files and man pages from within emacs

shift-K while over a word in vim will find the manual page for that word.
Otherwise, use ":!info foo" and ":!man blah".

Plus many other features. All common commands are either 1 or 2
keystrokes. Vim has infinite undo, multiple windows, an X gui, etc, etc.
And if you learn vi, you will never need to know how to use any other
editor, since vi is available on any modern (post 1970) unix machine. Ok,
maybe you'd need to learn ed(1) as well :)

Vim is strange compared to other editors, but if you don't already know
emacs it might be worth learning vi. Start it up and type ":help" :-)

[*] for redhat, anyway. If your distribution came with a non-vim-vi (like
elvis in slackware), you could get vim from www.vim.org. I don't know how
good the other vi-clones are.

-- 
-tim peters-
 tim@smug.adelaide.edu.au

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