Open Source

vi supports tabs! Well, not really... but if you want to have a handful of vi sessions open in a session, there's always suspend, and then fg "vi filename" to switch to a suspended session

When I first started using UNIX, I learned to use ex for editing configuration files. I wasn't really involved in any complex scripting - mostly a glorified babysitter. As time went by and I needed to coax more than basic functionality out of UNIX, I switched to vi and never really looked back. I don't even think about the editor, really... it's more reflex than conscious choice. That's probably the best compliment that I can give any utility...

Now, I have vim installed on the Windows box here at work, as I've grown tired of all of the letters that started to crop up in notepad. yy, cw, hjkl, etc.

nb: I use SciTE on Windows to troubleshoot the odd grammatical issue with a complex script, or when I need to provide printed documentation of the script.

I forgot to mention that you can have multiple buffers in vim, and go to next and rewind. Besides splitting. this will work on telnet /ssh.

I currently also use "screen" - started just yesterday, one window/terminal and many sub-terminals with bash, vim, irb, links (with ruby documentation). Can see them all below on the bar, and move with a quick 2 key combo.

Screen really shines when you are telnetting/ssh'ing.

I've only ever used vi, so I'd have to choose that one. I have tried others I found online but with no success.

Not exactly sure what you mean but I'm using something called Dev-C++ right now and it compiles what I need to do so I haven't used vi recently. Problem is, I can't get it to run any of my programs, but no matter, I found that I can run it through command prompt (it only works on my Vista and not my XP).

export EDITOR=vi

My favorite is VIM in Linux and Windows and vi in other machines.

Thanks

Ed is My editor of choice, with Yi coming in at a close second, and Ex/Vi in third.
Incidentally, Yi can emulate Ex/Vi, and even, perish the thought, Emacs. It is written in and configurable entirely within a Haskell runtime environment, and works well with XMonad, the WM I use. Of course, it can be configured to emulate Ed, but why bother?
Ed takes next to nil resources, is virtually universally the same across all the platforms on which it runs, and also happens to be the foundation uponn which Ex and eventually Vi were based. Not only that, but it was designed to work well with diff, though I have not yet figured out how to do it.
Another great editor, a so called "orthodox" editor, would be THE (The Hessling Editor). Of course, Ed can do much of what it does, though without the visual pizazz that THE and Vi, Vim in particlar, offer.

... I use vi for any really simple editing I have to do. Otherwise I do my script editing in Windows with a fantastic editor called Aurora/32, and then go back to ux and type:
cat > myfile.sh

...and paste, followed by CTRL_D.

I'm a bit of a ux newbie, but I just can't handle typing syntax into an editor in order to 'edit' my file; especially when I can use a free mouse-driven syntax-highlighting fully macro & tab enabled editor instead!

u can do ur scripting in any windows fancy editor lite notepad++, scintilla or ne commercial ones available. then do an ftp to unix and run dos2unix command over ur file to convert it to unix format. ..... i sometimes do that. I use notepad++ currently for perl. I earlier used codeblocks editor when i used C.