Talk:TECO (text editor)

message: From the "Standard TECO <nl> TEXT EDITOR AND CORRECTOR FOR THE <nl> VAX-11, PDP-11, PDP-10, and PDP-8 <nl> USER'S GUIDE AND LANGUAGE REFERENCE MANUAL" May 1985 Edition:
:"... a novice TECO user can begin creating and editing text files after only a few hours of instruction."
Which only goes to show how much things have improved. --Kop 17:39, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  TECO hype 

message: While I agree that TECO programs can be incomprehensible, TECO used as an editor wasn't that bad.  I think it's comparable to editors like ed.  I've added a section showing a simple TECO editing session to show this side of TECO.  Alas, it's been over twenty years since I last used it for real, and can't find a copy to run right now, so I'm not 100% sure of the example.  Of course, there are any number of ways to make any given change and this is only one of them. Jordan Brown 07:11, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: TECO as an editor 

message: No discussion of TECO is complete without this program.  I'm not sure it's really encyclopedic, but it is insane.
+0UN QN"E 20UN ' BUH BUV HK
QN< J BUQ QN*10/3UI
QI< \+2*10+(QQ*QI)UA B L K QI*2-1UJ QA/QJUQ
QA-(QQ*QJ)-2\ 10@I// -1%I >
QQ/10UT QH+QT+48UW QW-58"E 48UW %V ' QV"N QV^T ' QWUV QQ-(QT*10)UH >
QV^T @^A/
/
I have no idea how it works, but it does.  It defaults to calculating 20 digits, but you can ask for a different number by typing a number before the program, e.g. "100+0UN ...".  (I think it's intended to be executed out of a Q-register, so that the number of digits is a straightforward parameter to the macro call.  Unfortunately I don't remember how to put it into a Q-register or execute it from one.)
Here's a few tidbits of how it works...
+0UN                                                  	Add zero to the current value and store it in register N.
QN                                                    	Retrieve the value of register N
"E ... '                                              	Do this stuff if the value is equal to zero
20UN                                                  	Store 20 into register N
B                                                     	Synonym for zero (usually used to refer to the start of the buffer)
UH                                                    	Store it in register H
BUV                                                   	Store zero in register V
H                                                     	Equivalent to B,Z:  the entire buffer
K                                                     	Kill (so HK empties the buffer)
QN< ... >                                             	Do the enclosed stuff as many times as register N says
... The rest is left as an exercise for the reader ...	... The rest is left as an exercise for the reader ...
I'm pretty sure this program is at least 30 years old, since I saw it (or some other program that calculated pi in TECO :-) back when I was using TECO in ~1976.
I grabbed this from .  Nearby they have a PDP-10 simulator running TOPS-20...
Jordan Brown 08:27, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Here's more detail on PI.TEC: .  Among other things it mentions the author (Stan Rabinowitz) and even an academic journal article reference () on the subject. Paul Koning 16:02, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  While I was a student at York in the late 1970s some maniac wrote a program in Teco to solve the Mastermind game.  Now, how many of you ever typed 0YY? Number774 (talk) 20:24, 1 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  calculate pi with TECO 

message: Given that the editor in question is generally refered to just as "TECO" I would like to propose to rename the article from Text Editor and Corrector to TECO (text editor). This is probably somewhat controversial as expansion of abbreviations is apparently the prefered method for disambiguation of article titles. However, I was just browsing through :Category:Text editors and was confused for a while because I did not immediately realise that the name "Text Editor and Corrector" refered to TECO. It also would match the usage in the article text itself. (The name "TECO (text editor)" would also allow to use the pipe trick when linking to this article, but this is only relevant to wiki editors, not to wiki readers, and therefore not really relevant.) —Tobias Bergemann 10:26, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: A redirect would serve the same purpose Tedickey 10:36, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No, it wouldn't, as the article would still be listed under the title "Text Editor and Corrector" in its categories. —Tobias Bergemann 11:11, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps - but googling on "TECO", I see that it has relatively low name-recognition (perhaps 10% of the hits - the other 90% are unrelated commercial abbreviations) Tedickey 11:40, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

text: And reading further, I see for example a hit on wikipedia's dab page for "TECO".  While popular long ago, it's pretty apparent that TECO-the-editor hasn't enough name-recognition to displace other topics.  Of course, changing wikipedia around would increase it.... Tedickey 11:45, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rename article to TECO (text editor)? 

message: "tikou" is a variant I've never heard.  Perhaps a reliable source is needed here. Tedickey (talk) 17:30, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: /'tikoʊ/ is the only version I have heard (well, maybe /'tiːkoʊ/), and I was at MIT Project MAC from 1971-1977, when TECO was in active use. Pronunciation on this page was previously given as tee'koh, which presumably means the same thing, using the World Book Encyclopedia's pronunciation system.  But IPA is the Wikipedia standard. --macrakis (talk) 00:10, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It seems that I was misled by the fonts at hand - on a different machine, I see the "ʊ".  So... that's "iː	bead, peat, feet" and "oʊ	beau, hoe, poke".  Sounds okay...Tedickey (talk) 00:31, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  pronunciation of "TECO" 

message: The page previously to my edit stated that "thus any character string is a TECO program", which is simply untrue. TECO has a well-defined syntax, and will reject ill-formed command strings just as any other programming language interpreter will. As examples of syntax restrictions: only single alphabetic characters or single digit characters are valid as Q-register names; parentheses and angle brackets must occur in balanced pairs; and so on. I could easily add further examples.
The statement to which I've objected may well be reminiscently humorous and rhetorically pointed, but falsehoods shouldn't be in an encyclopaedia.
As always, feel free to disagree with my changes. Kay Dekker (talk) 20:18, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not all character strings are TECO programs! 

message: A wiki seems to lack the requirements for a reliable source Tedickey (talk) 21:32, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: well, the main issue with a wiki is that it's not possible to source the statements to a single individual (or group) who're known for their expertise.   Perhaps by using the material in the wiki you could find some website where the material is discussed in that manner. Tedickey (talk) 22:10, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wiki as a source... 

message: The use of "our" as in "...program source on our PDP-1..." is a bit idiosyncratic :)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.228.170.193 (talk) 23:34, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  our