Trials and Tribulations of avoiding vi

So I'm stuck working today with a Solaris box. That means no Emacs. Heck, that means even no nano! Instead all I have is vi. Oh no!

Sure, some of you think vi is great. More power to you. Its just not something I like to touch, even if I grant automatic respect to anyone who uses it well. Just like watching any competant craftsman doing their daily tasks, watching a good vi master is pretty fun.

I've been spoiled by Redhat, Ubuntu, and Mac OS X. They come with Emacs installed, and if you have a few rights, you can add in new text editors. On Mac OS X I'll use Textmates, but otherwise I'll make do with Emacs or even Nano if I must.

If I could have argued successfully for more rights on the Solaris box, and had the rights to download software, I would have gotten Emacs working on that machine. Alas, the chance of that happening is around the same amount as a presidential political candidate not selling out his morals and ethics. Which means it ain't happening.

So, my work around?

I had access to the python shell. I wrote the file in there and saved it to a text file. Annoying at times, but less painful for me than trying yet again to figure out vi. I got my stuff done pretty quick and went on to other things.