EDIT(1)

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

SYNOPSIS
edit [ -r ] 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. The following brief introduction should help you get started with edit. A more complete basic introduction is provided by Edit: A tutorial . A Ex/edit command summary (version 2.0) is also very useful. See ex(1) for other useful documents; in particular, if you are using a CRT terminal you will want to learn about the display editor vi.

BRIEF INTRODUCTION
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 which you can then edit, and tells you how many lines and characters are in the file. To create a new file, just make up a name for the file and try to run edit on it; you will cause an error diagnostic, but don't worry.

Edit prompts for commands with the character `:', 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). Most commands to edit use its ``current line'' if you don't tell them which line to use. Thus if you say print (which can be abbreviated p) and hit carriage return (as you should after all edit commands) this current line will be printed. If you delete (d) the current line, edit will print the new current line. When you start editing, edit makes the last line of the file the current line. If you delete this last line, then the new last line becomes the current one. In general, after a delete, the next line in the file becomes the current line. (Deleting the last line is a special case.)

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

Edit numbers the lines in the buffer, with the first line having number 1. If you give the command ``1'' then edit will type this first line. If you then give the command delete edit will delete the first line, and 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. You say ``s/old/new/'' where old is replaced by the old characters you want to get rid of and new is the new characters you want to replace it with.

The command file (f) will tell you how many lines there are in the buffer you are editing and will say ``[Modified]'' if you have changed it. After modifying a file you can put the buffer text back to replace the file by giving a write (w) command. You can then leave the editor by issuing a quit (q) command. If you run edit on a file, but don't 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 be warned that there has been ``No write since last change'' and edit will await another command. If you wish not to write the buffer out then you can issue another quit command. The buffer is then irretrievably discarded, and you return to the shell.

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

The change (c) command will change the current line to a sequence of lines you supply (as in append you give lines up to a line consisting of only a ``.''). You can tell change to change more than one line by giving the line numbers of the lines you want to change, i.e. ``3,5change''. You can print lines this way too. Thus ``1,23p'' prints the first 23 lines of the file.

The undo (u) command will reverse the effect of the last command you gave which changed the buffer. Thus if give a substitute command which doesn't do what you want, you can say undo and the old contents of the line will be restored. You can also undo an undo command so that you can continue to change your mind. Edit will give you a warning message when commands you do affect more than one line of the buffer. If the amount of change seems unreasonable, you should consider doing an undo and looking to see what happened. If you decide that the change is ok, then you can undo again to get it back. Note that commands such as write and quit cannot be undone.

To look at the next line in the buffer you can just hit carriage return. To look at a number of lines hit ^D (control key and, while it is held down D key, then let up both) 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 the text around where you are by giving the command ``z.''. The current line will then be the last line printed; you can get back to the line where you were before the ``z.'' command by saying ``''''. The z command can also be given other following characters ``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 do, e.g., ``z.12'' to get 12 lines total. This method of giving counts works in general; thus you can delete 5 lines starting with the current line with the command ``delete 5''.

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 the text it wraps, end 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 a symbolic name ``.''; this is most useful in a range of lines as in ``.,$print'' which prints the rest of the lines in the file. To get to the last line in the file you can refer to it by its symbolic name ``$''. Thus the command ``$ delete'' or ``$d'' deletes the last line in the file, no matter which line was the current line before. Arithmetic with line references is also possible. Thus the line ``$-5'' is the fifth before the last, and ``.+20'' is 20 lines after the present.

You can find out which line you are at by doing ``.=''. This is useful if you wish to move or copy a section of text within a file or between files. Find out the first and last line numbers you wish to copy or move (say 10 to 20). For a move you can then say ``10,20delete a'' which deletes these lines from the file and places them in a buffer named a. Edit has 26 such buffers named a through z. You can later get these lines back by doing ``put a'' to put the contents of buffer a after the current line. If you want to move or copy these lines between files you can give an edit (e) command after copying the lines, following it with the name of the other file you wish to edit, i.e. ``edit chapter2''. By changing delete to yank above you can get a pattern for copying lines. If the text you wish to move or copy is all within one file then you can just say ``10,20move $'' for example. It is not necessary to use named buffers in this case (but you can if you wish).

SEE ALSO
ex (1), vi (1), `Edit: A tutorial', by Ricki Blau and James Joyce

AUTHOR
William Joy

BUGS
See ex(1).