edit(1) (Editing Utilities) edit(1)
NAME
edit - text editor (variant of ex for casual users)
SYNOPSIS
edit [-r] [-x] [-C] name...
DESCRIPTION
edit 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
These options can be turned on or off via the set command in ex(1).
-r Recover file after an editor or system crash.
-x Encryption option; when used the file will be encrypted as it
is being written and will require an encryption key to be read.
edit makes an educated guess to determine if a file is
encrypted or not. See crypt(1). Also, see the NOTES section
at the end of this manual page.
-C Encryption option; the same as -x except that edit assumes
files are encrypted.
The following brief introduction should help you get started with
edit. If you are using a CRT terminal you may 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 will tell 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
will 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 will be
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printed. If you delete (d) the current line, edit will print 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 will read
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.
edit numbers the lines in the buffer, with the first line having
number 1. If you execute the command 1, then edit will type the
first line of the buffer. If you then execute the command d, edit
will delete the first line, line 2 will become line 1, and edit will
print the current line (the new line 1) so you can see where you are.
In general, the current line will always be 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 file (f) command will tell you how many lines there are in the
buffer you are editing and will say [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 will receive the message No write since
last change (:quit! overrides), and edit will wait 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 will 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, i.e., 3,5c. You can print lines this way too: 1,23p prints
the first 23 lines of the file.
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edit(1) (Editing Utilities) edit(1)
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 will be restored. You can also undo an undo command.
edit will give 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 will show 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 will appear in the middle of the text displayed, and the last
line displayed will become 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
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edit(1) (Editing Utilities) edit(1)
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, i.e., 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 $.
SEE ALSO
ed(1), ex(1), vi(1).
NOTES
The encryption options are provided with the Security Administration
Utilities package, which is available only in the United States.
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