Tribblix: manual page: edit.1

EDIT(1HAS) User Commands EDIT(1HAS)

NAME

edit - text editor (variant of ex for casual users)

SYNOPSIS

/usr/bin/edit [-| -s] [-l] [-L] [-R] [-r [filename]]
[-t tag] [-v] [-V] [-x] [-wn] [-C]
[+command | -c command] filename...

/usr/xpg4/bin/edit [-| -s] [-l] [-L] [-R] [-r [filename]]
[-t tag] [-v] [-V] [-x] [-wn] [-C]
[+command | -c command] filename...

/usr/xpg6/bin/edit [-| -s] [-l] [-L] [-R] [-r [filename]]
[-t tag] [-v] [-V] [-x] [-wn] [-C]
[+command | -c command] filename...

DESCRIPTION

The edit utility is a variant of the text editor ex recommended for
new or casual users who wish to use a command-oriented editor. It
operates precisely as ex with the following options automatically
set:

novice
ON

report
ON

showmode
ON

magic
OFF

The following brief introduction should help you get started with
edit. If you are using a CRT terminal you might want to learn about
the display editor vi.

To edit the contents of an existing file you begin with the command
edit name to the shell. edit makes a copy of the file that you can
then edit, and tells you how many lines and characters are in the
file. To create a new file, you also begin with the command edit with
a filename: edit name; the editor tells you it is a [New File].

The edit command prompt is the colon (:), which you should see after
starting the editor. If you are editing an existing file, then you
have some lines in edit's buffer (its name for the copy of the file
you are editing). When you start editing, edit makes the last line of
the file the current line. Most commands to edit use the current line
if you do not tell them which line to use. Thus if you say print
(which can be abbreviated p) and type carriage return (as you should
after all edit commands), the current line is printed. If you delete
(d) the current line, edit prints the new current line, which is
usually the next line in the file. If you delete the last line, then
the new last line becomes the current one.

If you start with an empty file or wish to add some new lines, then
the append (a) command can be used. After you execute this command
(typing a carriage return after the word append), edit reads lines
from your terminal until you type a line consisting of just a dot
(.); it places these lines after the current line. The last line you
type then becomes the current line. The insert (i) command is like
append, but places the lines you type before, rather than after, the
current line.

The edit utility numbers the lines in the buffer, with the first line
having number 1. If you execute the command 1, then edit types the
first line of the buffer. If you then execute the command d, edit
deletes the first line, line 2 becomes line 1, and edit prints the
current line (the new line 1) so you can see where you are. In
general, the current line is always the last line affected by a
command.

You can make a change to some text within the current line by using
the substitute (s) command: s/old/new/ where old is the string of
characters you want to replace and new is the string of characters
you want to replace old with.

The filename (f) command tells you how many lines there are in the
buffer you are editing and says [Modified] if you have changed the
buffer. After modifying a file, you can save the contents of the file
by executing a write (w) command. You can leave the editor by issuing
a quit (q) command. If you run edit on a file, but do not change it,
it is not necessary (but does no harm) to write the file back. If
you try to quit from edit after modifying the buffer without writing
it out, you receive the message No write since last change (:quit!
overrides), and edit waits for another command. If you do not want to
write the buffer out, issue the quit command followed by an
exclamation point (q!). The buffer is then irretrievably discarded
and you return to the shell.

By using the d and a commands and giving line numbers to see lines in
the file, you can make any changes you want. You should learn at
least a few more things, however, if you use edit more than a few
times.

The change (c) command changes the current line to a sequence of
lines you supply (as in append, you type lines up to a line
consisting of only a dot (.). You can tell change to change more than
one line by giving the line numbers of the lines you want to change,
that is, 3,5c. You can print lines this way too: 1,23p prints the
first 23 lines of the file.

The undo (u) command reverses the effect of the last command you
executed that changed the buffer. Thus if you execute a substitute
command that does not do what you want, type u and the old contents
of the line are restored. You can also undo an undo command. edit
gives you a warning message when a command affects more than one line
of the buffer. Note that commands such as write and quit cannot be
undone.

To look at the next line in the buffer, type carriage return. To look
at a number of lines, type ^D (while holding down the control key,
press d) rather than carriage return. This shows you a half-screen of
lines on a CRT or 12 lines on a hardcopy terminal. You can look at
nearby text by executing the z command. The current line appears in
the middle of the text displayed, and the last line displayed becomes
the current line; you can get back to the line where you were before
you executed the z command by typing ''. The z command has other
options: z- prints a screen of text (or 24 lines) ending where you
are; z+ prints the next screenful. If you want less than a screenful
of lines, type z.11 to display five lines before and five lines
after the current line. (Typing z.n, when n is an odd number,
displays a total of n lines, centered about the current line; when n
is an even number, it displays n-1 lines, so that the lines displayed
are centered around the current line.) You can give counts after
other commands; for example, you can delete 5 lines starting with the
current line with the command d5.

To find things in the file, you can use line numbers if you happen to
know them; since the line numbers change when you insert and delete
lines this is somewhat unreliable. You can search backwards and
forwards in the file for strings by giving commands of the form
/text/ to search forward for text or ?text? to search backward for
text. If a search reaches the end of the file without finding text,
it wraps around and continues to search back to the line where you
are. A useful feature here is a search of the form /^text/ which
searches for text at the beginning of a line. Similarly /text$/
searches for text at the end of a line. You can leave off the
trailing / or ? in these commands.

The current line has the symbolic name dot (.); this is most useful
in a range of lines as in .,$p which prints the current line plus the
rest of the lines in the file. To move to the last line in the file,
you can refer to it by its symbolic name $. Thus the command $d
deletes the last line in the file, no matter what the current line
is. Arithmetic with line references is also possible. Thus the line
$-5 is the fifth before the last and .+20 is 20 lines after the
current line.

You can find out the current line by typing `.='. This is useful if
you wish to move or copy a section of text within a file or between
files. Find the first and last line numbers you wish to copy or move.
To move lines 10 through 20, type 10,20d a to delete these lines from
the file and place them in a buffer named a. edit has 26 such buffers
named a through z. To put the contents of buffer a after the current
line, type put a. If you want to move or copy these lines to another
file, execute an edit (e) command after copying the lines; following
the e command with the name of the other file you wish to edit, that
is, edit chapter2. To copy lines without deleting them, use yank (y)
in place of d. If the text you wish to move or copy is all within one
file, it is not necessary to use named buffers. For example, to move
lines 10 through 20 to the end of the file, type 10,20m $.

OPTIONS

These options can be turned on or off using the set command in ex(1).

-C
Encryption option; same as the -x option,
except that vi simulates the C command of
ex. The C command is like the X command of
ex, except that all text read in is assumed
to have been encrypted.

-l
Set up for editing LISP programs.

-L
List the name of all files saved as the
result of an editor or system crash.

-R
Readonly mode; the readonly flag is set,
preventing accidental overwriting of the
file.

-r filename
Edit filename after an editor or system
crash. (Recovers the version of filename
that was in the buffer when the crash
occurred.)

-t tag
Edit the file containing the tag and
position the editor at its definition.

-v
Start up in display editing state using vi.
You can achieve the same effect by simply
typing the vi command itself.

-V
Verbose. When ex commands are read by means
of standard input, the input is echoed to
standard error. This can be useful when
processing ex commands within shell
scripts.

-x
Encryption option; when used, edit
simulates the X command of ex and prompts
the user for a key. This key is used to
encrypt and decrypt text using the
algorithm of the crypt command. The X
command makes an educated guess to
determine whether text read in is encrypted
or not. The temporary buffer file is
encrypted also, using a transformed version
of the key typed in for the -x option.

-wn
Set the default window size to n. This is
useful when using the editor over a slow
speed line.

+command | -c command
Begin editing by executing the specified
editor command (usually a search or
positioning command).

- | -s
Suppress all interactive user feedback.
This is useful when processing editor
scripts.

The filename argument indicates one or more files to be edited.

ATTRIBUTES

NOTES