[ih] cut and paste

[Jack Haverty]

AFAIK, vi was independent of TECO.  TECO started on the DEC PDP-1 in the 
early 60s.  Unix and vi came along more than a decade later IIRC.  But 
it's certainly likely that the implementors of vi had used TECO before 
or were at least aware of it.  At its beginnings, TECO was often used to 
edit programs on paper tape (!) with a printing terminal.

TECO was ostensibly an editor, but in reality it was a programming 
language and runtime environment.   I recall that somene actually wrote 
a timesharing system, in TECO macros, just as a hack.

FYI, here's the commands, circa 1976: 
https://bitsavers.org/pdf/mit/ai/ai_600dpi/TECO_V508_Nov1976.pdf

Jack


On 8/7/23 15:47, Michael Thomas via Internet-history wrote:
>
> 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
>
>