atatat@atatdot.net (Andrew Brown) writes:
> *lots* of programs use $PATH and and $EDITOR (or $VISUAL -- why are
> there two?)

Thats an interesting question.  At one time back when ~1-MIPS
VAX-750's roamed the land sucking down 10kw a piece and burping out
enough heat to make ones home oven blush, things weren't quite as
snappy as they are now.  Real (tm) full-screen editors took many
seconds to start up.  Emacs took 10 to 15 seconds of CPU time to
start.  VI wasn't all that much better.  One devised all sort of
crocks to keep from starting a second copy of *the* editor (see
emacsclient).  It just wasn't considered sporting to use that much CPU
time for trivial editing tasks.  The env variable VISUAL was for
"important" things that would justify a large CPU expenditure.  The
variable EDITOR was for simple things that could be done by much
simpler/faster programs.

Nowadays starting "emacs -nw" takes <100ms on a recent model home
computer.  The whole distinction between VISUAL and EDITOR is pretty
silly.

-wolfgang