edit(1) UNIX System V(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 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
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edit(1) UNIX System V(Editing Utilities) edit(1)
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.
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.
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edit(1) UNIX System V(Editing Utilities) edit(1)
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 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 $.
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edit(1) UNIX System V(Editing Utilities) edit(1)
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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