retrocomputing

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Is there a precedent for a really delay-tolerant command line interface? (A bit off-topic) (lemmy.sdf.org)

submitted 4 months ago by CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org to c/retrocomputing@lemmy.sdf.org

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I've been playing with an idea that would involve running a machine over a delay-tolerant mesh network. The thing is, each packet is precious and needs to be pretty much self contained in that situation, while modern systems assume SSH-like continuous interaction with the user.

Has anyone heard of anything pre-existing that would work here? I figured if anyone would know about situations where each character is expensive, it would be you folks.

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[–] scroll_responsibly@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

ed is the true path to nirvana

[–] MajorHavoc@programming.dev 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Delightful!

"Of course, on the system I administrate, vi is symlinked to ed. Emacs has been replaced by a shell script which 1) Generates a syslog message at level LOG_EMERG; 2) reduces the user's disk quota by 100K; and 3) RUNS ED!!!!!!"

Gave me a giggle. That 100k loss has got to hurt for a user who still tries to run 'vi' on a classic system, I imagine.

Edit:

Another gem:

"Ed is generous enough to flag errors, yet prudent enough not to overwhelm the novice with verbosity."