edit(1) edit(1)
edit - text editor (variant of ex for casual users)
edit [-r] [-x] [-C] name ...
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(1) 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 is encrypted as it is being
written and requires 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 WARNING section at the end of this
reference 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 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, 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, the new last line becomes the
current one.
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edit(1) edit(1)
If you start with an empty file or wish to add some new lines, 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 becomes the
current line. The command insert (i) 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, 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 command file (f) 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
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 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
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edit(1) edit(1)
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 $.
ed(1), ex(1), vi(1).
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