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Re: ed & press return to continue
From: |
Paul Jackson |
Subject: |
Re: ed & press return to continue |
Date: |
18 Oct 2000 21:02:14 GMT |
|> ed 0.2 has the annoying habit of asking me to "press <return>
|> to continue" on a longer-than-24-line print command, even when
|> I am in an Emacs window. Traditional ed does not do this.
I agree that it is annoying, being a regular user of traditional
ed for 20+ years now (not inside emacs ').
It is a "linux-tradition" now, it seems. So if there is anyone
left using ed besides us two, you might have to make it some sort
of option, defaulting to the annoying mode unless some config-file,
option or environ-var says otherwise.
|> Is anyone still maintaining ed? If not, I'll volunteer. I use
|> it a lot, mostly for editing crontabs in remote-login windows
|> in emacs :).
I'd repost your query on "comp.editors", where it is more
common to see "ed" mentioned.
The last I tried to find an "ed" maintainer, I didn't get too far.
I did get the following response:
|> From address@hidden Tue May 11 16:02:52 1999
|> To: pj (Paul Jackson)
|> cc: address@hidden
|> Subject: Re: Proposal for ed(1) feature.
|> Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 16:02:28 -0700
|> From: "Andrew_L. Moore" <address@hidden>
|>
|> I maintain ed(1) under a GNU and a modified BSD license
|> Would SGI consent to the BSD licensed distribution as well?
|> Thanks for the suggestion. This is a nice comprise to
|> multiple file support.
|> You might post to bugs-gnu-utils group ( I am on a very slow link
|> P.S. gnu.utils.bug
|> and can't look up the exact address, sorry) for wider comments.
|> But that it is a feature in wide distribution is a good reason
|> for inclusion.
|> -AM
But then, after some effort to get any interest (pro or con)
on gnu.utils.org, and trying to get back to Andrew with the
results (a couple of offhand remarks), I never heard from
Andrew again.
So far as I can tell, the gnu licensed ed has not been touched
since 1994.
If you do decide to make an ed 0.3, I'd like to contribute the
following feature:
|> I would like to add a feature to ed(1) - the ability to
|> edit multiple command line specified files in a single
|> ed invocation.
|>
|> I have, in a previous life, included this feature in all
|> the Unix systems shipped by Convergent, including the AT&T
|> Unix PC (circa 1985). In my current life, as an employee
|> of SGI for the last 10 years, I have included a different
|> implementation of this feature in all SGI Irix systems
|> shipped in the last 8 years.
|>
|> Now, with SGI's consent, I would like to include this
|> feature in the gnu (GPL'd) version and BSD-licensed ed.
|>
|> A comment from my copy of the code explains its usage:
|>
|> /*
|> * ed file1 file2 ...
|> *
|> * Supports editing multiple files named on the command line.
|> * To switch from the (N)th file to the (N+1)th file,
|> * issue the command: e %. The '%' is replaced with the name
|> * of the next file from the command line.
|> */
|>
|> The implementation is simple, less than a dozen short lines of
|> code.
|>
|> It's very non-intrusive -- if you don't attempt the command
|> 'e %', then nothing is changed. And if you invoke 'e %', but
|> haven't named multiple files on the command line, it still
|> behaves just like before -- tries to edit a file named '%'.
--
--
I won't rest till it's the best ... Manager, Linux System Software
Paul Jackson (address@hidden; address@hidden) 3x1373 http://sam.engr.sgi.com/pj