[tlug] Readline, editing-mode vi, and reverse-i-search

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Curt Sampson writes:

 > Does anybody (Hello Stephen!) know how to make this do the "right" thing

I avoid readline when I can because it's GPL.  This is a habit that
goes back to RMS strong-arming Ghostscript into removing three lines
from a Makefile with a threat of a frivolous lawsuit (Ghostscript
didn't distribute readline, so there's no way that it was violating
the GPL).  So...

wideload:src/MacPorts 13:10$ echo $SHELL
/bin/zsh

which implements its own well-documented (IME YMMV) line editor.

Zsh has its own problems.  I find it nearly unusable in default config
because `-' and `_' are considered word constituents.  This is a minor
annoyance when setting up a new account or working with someone else's
system.  It has many fewer addons for app-specific command-line
completion than bash, too.  Probably not relevant to you, but
Mac OS X really is snafu'd when it comes to setting up your Unix
environment -- I've found it impossible to guarantee that subshells
use zsh rather than bash.

However, I've generally found zsh to be more powerful in default
config and better documented (== the documentation is rarely *wrong*,
and what you need to know doesn't require grepping through a manpage
that is bigger than the NetBSD kernel source) than bash.