edit(1) 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 want to use a command-oriented editor. It
operates precisely as ex with the following options
automatically set:
novice ON
report 1
showmode ON
magic OFF
These options can be turned on or off via the set command in
ex(1).
-r Recover name 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 NOTICES section at the end of this manual
page.
-C Encryption option; the same as -x except that edit
assumes files are encrypted.
edit processes supplementary code set characters according to
the locale specified in the LC_CTYPE environment variable [see
LANG on environ(5)].
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
bytes 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].
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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 press 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 line becomes the
current one.
If you start with an empty file or want to add some new lines,
then the append (a) command can be used. After you enter
append or a, press RETURN. edit will read lines from your
terminal until you type a line consisting of just a dot (.)
and it will place 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.
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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, 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 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, press RETURN. To look
at a number of lines, type ^D (while holding down the control
key, press d) rather than 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.
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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 want to move or copy a section of text within a
file or between files. Find the first and last line numbers
you want 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
want to edit, that is, edit chapter2. To copy lines without
deleting them, use yank (y) in place of d. If the text you
want 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 $.
FILES
/usr/lib/locale/locale/LC_MESSAGES/uxed.abi
language-specific message file [See LANG on environ(5).]
REFERENCES
ed(1), ex(1), vi(1)
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NOTICES
The encryption options are provided with the Encryption
Utilities package, which is available only in the United
States.
Copyright 1994 Novell, Inc. Page 5