[Info-vax] Intel proposal to simplify x86-64

[Dan Cross]

In article <u5pj2u$v2q$2 at news.misty.com>,
Johnny Billquist  <bqt at softjar.se> wrote:
>On 2023-06-07 11:09, Jan-Erik Söderholm wrote:
>> I must ask (since I have never used TECO).
>> 
>> What is the unique feature of TECO that cannot be done
>> with some other tool(s)?
>
>I don't think there is anything that is that unique.
>However, depending on how you use it, you might need a bunch of other 
>tools to accomplish the same.
>
>It obviously is an editor. But it's also a programming language that can 
>be twisted into doing a lot of stuff. If you are familiar with sed (a 
>Unix tool), it is somewhat similar. But I'd say TECO can do more. 

Believe it or not, `sed` is actually Turing complete; I imagine
that TECO is as well.  So in some absolute sense, both are
equally powerful.

Whether it's more or less painful to accomplish a given task in
sed versus TECO is of course another matter, and I'd imagine
that for most non-trivial tasks, TECO is easier.

Perhaps a better comparison vis Unix tools is with `ed`, though.

>Obviously the original Emacs was written in TECO. There are other 
>editors written in TECO as well. I sometimes use it when I want to do 
>somewhat more complex operations over larger text files where the 
>changes are a bit more complex than just search and replace.
>
>But writing code in TECO is arcane. It has been described (and not 
>without merit) as a write-only language. Reading it, it looks mostly 
>like line noise. So it's unlikely that most people know it, or want to 
>learn it. So these days, it's mostly old and weird people who might ever 
>use TECO. There might, of course, be various tools and programs existing 
>that are written in TECO, that people use, without knowing how to write 
>TECO themselves...

Well put.  I feel like TECO has more purchase on PDPs of various
types than on VMS, as well.

	- Dan C.