an editor that doesn't require any esc or control keys to be used...

[John Chambers]

mike ledoux writes:
| > > ed, ex, and sed fit the bill.
| > Um, yeah, I guess those are editors.  Sorta...  ;-)
|
| *shrug*.  Every sysadmin should at least know enough about ed to do basic
| file editing.  Very useful in situations like this, or situations where
| you otherwise manage to misconfigure your console such that a visual
| editor won't work.  Then there are the systems that are just too damned
| old to have even vi installed by default:  I'd rather just use ed and
| be done than spend weeks trying to compile and install something more
| functional.

I'll second that. I've often been glad that I learned ed, way back in
the  early days when vi was a rumored new app that would be available
Real Soon Now. I've often found myself trying to deal remotely with a
brain-damaged  machine, or more often, connecting through a link that
garbles half the character set.  If you've learned both ed  and  sed,
you  can  do a lot of cleanup and configuring despite all the efforts
of the comm subsystem to defeat your efforts.

Also, like sed, ed can be used in a script.   This  comes  in  really
handy at times.  Especially times when you can't rely on having perl.

And if you know how to use ed, you can impress  and  amaze  all  your
friends.  It gets you no end of geek points.