EX(1) HP-UX 5.0 EX(1) NAME ex - text editor SYNOPSIS ex [ - ] [ -v ] [ -t tag ] [ -r ] [ -R ] [ +command ] [ -l ] [ -x ] name ... HP-UX MODEL POSITION Core Utilities Extended SVID REMARKS: The decryption facilities provided by this software are under control by the United States Government and cannot be exported without special licenses. These capabilities can be sold only to domestic customers at this time. DESCRIPTION Ex is the root of a family of editors including: ex, edit and vi. Ex is a superset of ed, with the most notable extension being a display editing facility. Display based editing is the focus of vi. If you have a CRT terminal, you may wish to use a display based editor; in this case see vi(1), which is a command which focuses on the display editing portion of ex. DOCUMENTATION The Ex Reference Manual is a comprehensive and complete manual for the command mode features of ex, but you cannot learn to use the editor by reading it. For an introduction to more advanced forms of editing using the command mode of ex see the editing documents written by Brian Kernighan for the editor ed; the material in the introductory and advanced documents works also with ex. An Introduction to Display Editing with Vi introduces the display editor vi and provides reference material on vi. The Vi Quick Reference card summarizes the commands of vi in a useful, functional way, and is useful with the Introduction. The vi(1) manual page can also be used as reference. FOR ED USERS If you have used ed you will find that ex has a number of new features useful on CRT terminals. Intelligent terminals and high speed terminals are very pleasant to use with vi. Generally, the editor uses far more of the capabilities of terminals than ed does, and uses the terminal capability data base terminfo(FILE) and the type of the terminal you are using from the variable TERM in the environment to determine how to drive your terminal efficiently. The editor makes use of features such as insert and delete character and line in its visual command (which can be abbreviated vi) and which is the central mode of editing when using vi(1). Ex contains a number of new features for easily viewing the text of the file. The z command gives easy access to windows of text. Hitting ^D causes the editor to scroll a half-window of text and is more useful for quickly stepping through a file than just hitting return. Of course, the screen-oriented visual mode gives constant access to editing context. Ex gives you more help when you make mistakes. The undo (u) command allows you to reverse any single change which goes astray. Ex gives you a lot of feedback, normally printing changed lines, and indicates when more than a few lines are affected by a command so that it is easy to detect when a command has affected more lines than it should have. The editor also normally prevents overwriting existing files unless you edited them so that you do not accidentally clobber with a write a file other than the one you are editing. If the system (or editor) crashes, or you accidentally hang up the phone, you can use the editor recover command to retrieve your work. This will get you back to within a few lines of where you left off. Ex has several features for dealing with more than one file at a time. You can give it a list of files on the command line and use the next (n) command to deal with each in turn. The next command can also be given a list of file names, or a pattern as used by the shell to specify a new set of files to be dealt with. In general, filenames in the editor may be formed with full shell metasyntax. The metacharacter `%' is also available in forming filenames and is replaced by the name of the current file. For moving text between files and within a file the editor has a group of buffers, named a through z. You can place text in these named buffers and carry it over when you edit another file. There is a command & in ex which repeats the last substitute command. In addition there is a confirmed substitute command. You give a range of substitutions to be done and the editor interactively asks whether each substitution is desired. It is possible to ignore case of letters in searches and substitutions. Ex also allows regular expressions which match words to be constructed. This is convenient, for example, in searching for the word ``edit'' if your document also contains the word ``editor.'' Ex has a set of options which you can set to tailor it to your liking. One option which is very useful is the autoindent option which allows the editor to automatically supply leading white space to align text. You can then use the ^D key as a backtab and space and tab forward to align new code easily. Miscellaneous new useful features include an intelligent join (j) command which supplies white space between joined lines automatically, commands < and > which shift groups of lines, and the ability to filter portions of the buffer through commands such as sort. INVOCATION OPTIONS The following invocation options are interpreted by ex: - Suppress all interactive-user feedback. This is useful in processing editor scripts. -v Invokes vi -t tagfR Edit the file containing the tag and position the editor at its definition. -r file Recover file after an editor or system crash. If file is not specified a list of all saved files will be printed. -R Readonly mode set, prevents accidentally overwriting the file. +command Begin editing by executing the specified editor search or positioning command. -l LISP mode; indents appropriately for lisp code, the () {} [[ and ]] commands in vi are modified to have meaning for lisp. -x Encryption mode; a key is prompted for allowing creation or editing of an encrypted file. The name argument indicates files to be edited. Ex States Command Normal and initial state. Input prompted for by :. Your kill character cancels partial command. Insert Entered by a i and c. Arbitrary text may be entered. Insert is normally terminated by line having only . on it, or abnormally with an interrupt. Visual Entered by vi, terminates with Q or ^\. Ex command names and abbreviations abbrev ab next n unabbrev una append a number nu undo u args ar unmap unm change c preserve pre version ve copy co print p visual vi delete d put pu write w edit e quit q xit x file f read re yank ya global g recover rec window z insert i rewind rew escape ! join j set se lshift < list l shell sh print next CR map source so resubst & mark ma stop st rshift > move m substitute s scroll ^D Ex Command Addresses n line n /pat next with pat . current ?pat previous with pat $ last x-n n before x + next x,y x through y - previous 'x marked with x +n n forward '' previous context % 1,$ Initializing options EXINIT place set's here in environment var. $HOME/.exrc editor initialization file ./.exrc editor initialization file set x enable option set nox disable option set x=val give value val set show changed options set all show all options set x? show value of option x Most useful options autoindent ai supply indent autowrite aw write before changing files ignorecase ic in scanning lisp ( ) { } are s-exp's list print ^I for tab, $ at end magic . [ * special in patterns number nu number lines paragraphs para macro names which start ... redraw simulate smart terminal scroll command mode lines sections sect macro names ... shiftwidth sw for < >, and input ^D showmatch sm to ) and } as typed showmode smd show insert mode in vi slowopen slow stop updates during insert window visual mode lines wrapscan ws around end of buffer? wrapmargin wm automatic line splitting Scanning pattern formation ^ beginning of line $ end of line . any character \< beginning of word \> end of word [str] any char in str [^str] ... not in str [x-y] ... between x and y * any number of preceding AUTHOR Vi and ex are based on software developed by The University of California, Berkeley California, Computer Science Division, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. FILES /usr/lib/ex?.?strings error messages /usr/lib/ex?.?recover recover command /usr/lib/ex?.?preserve preserve command /usr/lib/*/* describes capabilities of terminals $HOME/.exrc editor startup file ./.exrc editor startup file /tmp/Exnnnnn editor temporary /tmp/Rxnnnnn named buffer temporary /usr/preserve preservation directory SEE ALSO awk(1), ctags(1), ed(1), edit(1), grep(1), sed(1), vi(1), curses(3), term(4), terminfo(4). CAVEATS AND BUGS The undo command causes all marks to be lost on lines changed and then restored if the marked lines were changed. Undo never clears the buffer modified condition. The z command prints a number of logical rather than physical lines. More than a screen full of output may result if long lines are present. File input/output errors do not print a name if the command line `-' option is used. There is no easy way to do a single scan ignoring case. The editor does not warn if text is placed in named buffers and not used before exiting the editor. Null characters are discarded in input files and cannot appear in resultant files.