[ih] cut and paste

[Michael Thomas]

On 8/7/23 3:36 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> TECO, circa 1970, had a notion of "QRegisters", which were places you 
> could put some text and later insert it into your document elsewhere.  
> TECO used single-letter commands, which you could string together to 
> perform complex actions. See http://tenex.opost.com/anhc-31-4-anec.pdf
>
> E.G., "hxa" would put the entire contents of your file into QRegister 
> "a"; the "h" is shorthand for "0,z" which specifies everything from 
> character0 through the last character (z).   The "x" is the actual 
> command top copy text into the specified QRegister. The command "ga" 
> would "get" the contents of QRegister "a" and insert it into your text 
> at the current cursor location.
>
> So, "cut and paste" were in use in 1970 and probably earlier.   I 
> don't recall the terms "cut and paste" being used, and the TECO 
> commands were not ^C et al, but it's the same function.   Emacs came 
> later, written as a set of TECO macros and commonly loaded into the 
> "e" QRegister - hence "E Macros".
>
I never used TECO but it was apparently a hacker's fun zone. My business 
partner wrote an ascii lunar lander in TECO.

Do you know if vi had any roots in TECO?

Mike