Editor war

The editor war is an ongoing debate about which text editor is best. The two largest camps are those favoring vi and those favoring Emacs.

Perceived benefits of vi-like editors

• vi commands are entered largely without the use of modifier keys such as Ctrl or Alt. Some users find this reduces wrist strain (see repetitive strain injury).
• vi is smaller than Emacs. See feature creep.
• vi's presence in Unix based operating systems is guaranteed as part of the POSIX standard.
• vi blends naturally with the Unix environment and you can use all the standard Unix commands that you are already familiar with, or on all sections of your edit buffer.
• vi conforms with Unix design and philosophy (for instance, "small is beautiful" as opposed to "big is beautiful"). Unix does not advocate building "Swiss Army knives", rather, the right tool for the right job. Emacs is very much a Swiss Army knife of an editor, and belongs to the "big is beautiful" camp. There is a reason for this: Emacs has roots in the TECO editor, which predates Unix.
• Unlike Emacs, which quite typically is heavily customized by its advanced user, vi is intentionally "what you see is what you get (pretty much everywhere)". For instance, most Emacs users would not feel they quite have "their Emacs" if their profile or customizations is not available to them in a given environment. This is hardly ever the case with vi which is pretty much standard, and blends naturally with the Unix environment and commands.
• vi works better with terminals; while this is not as important as it used to be, sometimes this ability is still a factor, such as when system problems have reached the point where the GUI cannot be started, so one has only a severely limited console environment. Also, many people still prefer a console environment for complex tasks.
• Compile and debug code from within vim using :mke, :cl, and similar commands. (This functionality is not available within vi proper.) Note that debugging code from within the text editor is also a perceived benefit of Emacs over vi. This illustrates the subjective nature of the conflict.