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Showing revision 2TECO, the
T{ape|ext} Editor and Corrector, is unique in the field of computing: it is the missing link between a text editor and a programming language. In technical terms, it is an
imperative, Turing-complete programming language for editing text. By virtue of this fact (we'll get into what that means later), it is also very,
very,
very,
very powerful. For now, know also that it's both the oldest single editor and the oldest family of text editors in use today (rarely - albeit there's no reason why this should be so).
TECO-1, so named because it runs on the Digital PDP-1 mainframe, was written way back when the chair in the Oval Office was warmed by LBJ's butt; it was soon followed by TECO-10, TECO-11, and TECO-12
By definition, a TECO has the following features:
- Every character is a command (this is not an understatement -
- Every command takes the form [-]n[@]X[arg$], where [-] is an optional negative sign, n represents an optional number (assumed to be one if absent), [@] represents a modifier symbol, X is the function to be performed (one character),
You can see it's not all that different from Vi or Vim: