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DOS vi editor?

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norwestrzh

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I have a copy of a vi clone that runs in DOS. It is a sub-set of the classic vi editor of Unix/Linux fame (infamy?). I found it pretty useful. It is small (24,846 b) and fast. I have no idea where it came from, or where I got it. Anyone familiar with it? I'd love to find the sources for it. Maybe port it to another architecture?Since it is so small, I suspect that it is written in assembler? BUT, I have no idea. Any information about it would be greatly appreciated.

Roger
 
Running a "strings" program on it (on a Unix system, if you don't have something like that available under DOS) or just looking through a hex/ASCII dump of the program might find some information on it, such as a version string. Speaking of which, have you tried just typing :version at it?
 
Strings shows nothing but error messages, and such. BUT, there is one string that might be a clue? --> stevie. A search on-line turns up a web site (Tim Thompson's) with two versions of stevie -- the original (Bill Joy?), and one that was improved by Tony Andrews. The source code is C, so there might be hope? It seems that there are versions for quite a few 6502 computers, and later on Unix, OS/2, and Amiga.

Roger
 
Yes, I recall that stevie was a fairly well known vi clone (Bill Joy had nothing to do with it) back in the day, and Wikipedia has a page for it indicating that it was originally released in 1987 for the Atari ST, and it eventually became the basis for the first version of Vim, released in 1991.
 
The MKS toolkit had a vi for DOS (among many other things). I think DJGPP had one, but prolly only for 386+. Elvis was another one.
 
Also look for Calvin which used to be called Free vi. Version 2.3 has a github with source. The file size is a bit more than 46KB which makes one of the smaller currently available vi inspired editors. I presume even earlier versions would have been smaller but quick searches of early shareware collections doesn't turn up a file.

github.com

GitHub - sylvandb/calvin: Paul Vojta's Calvin -- Small VI editor for MS-DOS

Paul Vojta's Calvin -- Small VI editor for MS-DOS. Contribute to sylvandb/calvin development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com github.com
 
A Google search for "site:cd.textfiles.com stevie editor" includes the result http://cd.textfiles.com/simtel20/00_INDEX.TXT which contains:
STEVI69S.ZIP B 156384 900503 Source for STEVIE vi clone v3.69X (for TC2.0)
Click to expand...
which is under http://cd.textfiles.com/simtel20/MSDOS/EDITOR/, alongside a ...X.ZIP file which is presumably the executable. Presumably TC2.0 means "Turbo C 2.0", which I think is one of the versions that were available free from the Borland Museum.

There are probably some other versions available there too. http://discmaster.textfiles.com/ might reveal others.
 
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