2.9BSD/usr/src/ucb/ex/updates/usr.news.ex.2
Version 2.13 -- September 23, 1980
The provisions for changing the window size with a numeric
prefix argument to certain visual commands have been deleted.
The correct way to change the window size is to use the z
command, for example z5<cr> to change the window to 5 lines.
An undocumented "feature" which caused the ^^ command to return
to the previous tag, if in the current file, instead of the
previous file, has been removed.
Version 2.12 -- July 23, 1980
A change was made to the sys_errlist array in ex_subr.c so that
Berkeley V7 quotas will produce the right error message.
A couple of minor bug fixes were made to get the editor to
compile on version 6. The option to use 1K BUFSIZ has been
deleted, since it is no longer used on our 1K system.
Version 2.11 -- June 24, 1980
The visual page motion commands ^F and ^B now treat any preceding
counts as number of pages to move, instead of changes to the
window size. That is, 2^F moves forward 2 pages.
A :vi <file> command from visual mode is now treated the same
as a :edit <file> or :ex <file> command. The meaning of the
vi command from ex command mode is not affected.
A read only mode now lets you guarantee you won't clobber your
file by accident. You can set the on/off option "readonly" (ro)
and writes will fail unless you use an ! after the write.
Commands such as x, ZZ, and autowrite, and in general anything
that writes is affected. This option is turned on if you invoke
ex with the -R flag. A new link called "view" has been created.
View is just like vi but it sets readonly.
The editor now supports certain terminals that use strings other
then \r and \n for return and linefeed by implementing the cr
and nl termcap options. (Thanks to UCLA for these enhancements).
The termcap attribute ns is now checked for, and ex refuses to
go into visual mode on such a terminal unless it has sf.
If you change your start and stop characters to something other
than the default ^S and ^Q, vi now turns them off. This causes
people who change them to escape not to lose so badly.
The quit character is once again turned off so that datamedias
which send ^\ for the right arrow key work.
If you type in an unmatched ) or } in showmatch mode, the editor
will now beep to warn you about your mistake. The ) or } is
still accepted.
Editor scripts can now contain comments. Begin the comments with "
(double quote). Comments can be on their own line or come at the
end of command lines. The comment continues to the end of the line.
The 3rd version of the USG tty driver is now supported, making it
possible on USG systems to interrupt redrawing the screen and to
not flush output when interruptable commands take place.
The rewind command has been added to the list of commands that
the autowrite option knows about.
A bug on the USG system where hanging up the phone causes more
than one SIGHUP to be sent has been compensated for.
A bug which caused a file that bombed out in the middle of
an edit command to be considered modified has been fixed.
The source file ex_io.c has been split into ex_io.c and
ex_unix.c to avoid a problem where many C compilers overflowed
the symbol table.
A bug which prevented turning off your prompt in your .exrc
has been fixed.
Some of the code internal to the editor has been rearranged
and some comments added.
The bug fix to the USG tty driver to output a null character
as padding at 1200 baud has been improved to output a DEL
at 1200 baud or above.
Terminals with small screens (less than 20 columns or less
than 5 lines) should now work.
A bug which prevented you from entering the character DEL
into the buffer if you changed your interrupt character to
something else besides DEL has been fixed.
A bug which caused things like d) and d} to miss the last
character when they should have deleted to the end of the
buffer has been fixed.
A bug which caused the last character to be lost when you
read in a file with no newline at the end of the last line
has been fixed.
A bug that caused garbage to be in the buffer if the temp file
overflowed has been fixed.
The character | can now be escaped with \| in file names.
A bug which caused the editor to not work if the tab stop size
did not divide the screen width has been fixed.
A bug on HP terminals that caused the screen to be messed up if
you scrolled up something that began the same way as the echo line
has been fixed.
An old ed bug which caused globals to fail when they did a substitute
on the next line has been fixed.
The % operator will now find matching square brackets the same way
it does parentheses and braces. It will not display them in
showmatch mode, however, and will not use a ] to match all ('s.
Ex looks in your environment for EXINIT. If it finds it, that
is used instead of looking for your .exrc. This should make
entry into ex faster, along with the termlib feature of looking
for a termcap entry in TERMCAP.
Internally, it is possible to turn off about a dozen different
options when compiling the editor to make it fit in 64K.
See the makefile for a list of options.
Version 2.10 -- February 2, 1980 (Corresponds to 3.3)
The default window sizes have been changed. At 300 baud the
window is now 8 lines (was 1/2 the screen size). At 1200 baud
the window is now 16 lines (was 2/3 the screen size, which was
usually also 16 for a typical 24 line CRT). At 9600 baud the
window is still the full screen size. Any baud rate less than
1200 behaves like 300, any over 1200 like 9600.
A new command mode command "x" (for "xit") has been added. This
is the same as wq but will not bother to write if there have been
no changes to the file. The command letter was chosen for
convenience and compatibilty with hed.
The command "ZZ" from vi is the same as ":x<cr>". This is
the recommended way to leave the editor. Z must be typed twice
since this is two easy to type by accident and has such severe
effects if unintentional.
The options w300, w1200, and w9600 can be set. They are synonyms
for "window", but only apply at 300, 1200, or 9600 baud, resp.
Thus you can specify you want a 12 line window at 300 baud and
a 23 line window at 1200 baud with
:set w300=12 w1200=23
The "q" command from visual no longer works at all. You must
use "Q" to get to ex command mode.
The editor no longer uses nondestructive space, except when in
insert mode. It instead prints the character it would be
moving over. This is a real win on terminals that use an
escape sequence to nd space.
A minor incompatibility with the v7 ed has been fixed. Previously,
to do a global substitute with an escaped newline in the rhs, you
had to put two \'s in ex and one in ed. Ex now accepts the single
form as well as the double form. For example, instead of
g/foo/s//foo\\
bar/g
(which still works), you can now type, as in ed,
g/foo/s//foo\
bar/g
This means that the following ex command, which used to "work":
g/foo/s//foo bar\
.+1,/mumble/d
won't work anymore unless you put the trailing / on the substitution.
This usage is pretty obscure anyway.
A bug which caused the command "g/pattern" to print an error
message if "pattern" occurred on the last line has been fixed.
Limits have been raised so that an Ann Arbor terminal can be used,
and long tags can now be accomodated.
A bug that caused HP terminals to mess up in insert mode when inserting
before a tab which follows 7 or fewer characters at the beginning of a
line (such as a tags file) has been fixed.
A bug which causes term to be displayed incorrectly and which
caused a crash when changing terminal type when there happened
to be several |'s and a long string in genbuf has been fixed.
This bug was introduced in ex 2.9.
The patch for echo lines longer than 80 characters has been
repaired to do "Hit return to continue" after such lines and
print the entire output.
A bug that caused a messed up screen after a :sh command from
open mode has been fixed.
A bug which caused a tag request for a nonexistant tag to leave
the editor in nomagic mode has been fixed.
A bug which caused strange behavior if there is no default file
name when an autowrite save is attempted has been fixed.
A bug which caused the cursor to go to the wrong position when
^^D or 0^D is entered from column 2 in autoindent mode on terminals
that can backspace has been fixed.
In order to get 2.10 to fit on a v7 pdp-11, the following features
have been deleted:
The MASTERTAGS feature (undocumented use of /usr/lib/tags
as an alternate tag file)
Checking that a file being read in is an ascii file.
Turning off ^Q/^S on a v7 system.
Version 2.9 -- November 1, 1979
The meanings of semicolon and newline, broken in 2.8, have been fixed.
Newline with two arguments still prints the range, unless a semicolon
was present, in which case only the last line is printed. Semicolon
otherwise behaves as in ed (and ex 2.7).
For compatibility with ed: '%' is an abbreviation for '1,$'.
The default starting line for 'z' is '.+1' instead of '.'.
If 'z' is followed by a number, this number is remembered
(by setting the scroll option).
The + options to the command line invocation and to the edit
command now also work for the next command. In addition, the
text after the + is no longer limited to a line number or
/ or ? search string, but can be any single command. (It cannot
contain spaces except on command line invocation, and then must
be quoted to make the shell happy.) The only special case is
where + is used by itself - this is the same as +$.
The way window sizes and scrolling commands are based on the options
window and scroll has been rearranged. All command mode scrolling
commands (z and ctrl D) are based on scroll: ^D moves scroll lines,
z moves scroll*2 lines. Everything in visual (^D, ^U, ^F, ^B, z,
window sizes in general) are based on the window option. The
defaults are arranged so that everything seems as before, but
on hardcopy terminals at 300 baud the default for scroll is
11 instead of 6.
Whether ex prompts for commands now depends on the setting of the
prompt variable, so inside script you can say 'set prompt' and
get ex to prompt.
Tags are now searched for in nomagic mode instead of the funny
mode where magic characters were impossible to get.
Paragraphs and sections with one letter names (such as those
used by PWB/MM) now work - use a space (escaped by a backslash)
for the second letter. Default paragraphs and sections are included
for both MM and MS. (Thanks to adb for this)
A bug involving 16 bit arithmetic on a vax for the yank command
has been fixed.
The text of the mailed message from expreserve has been improved
slightly.
The editor now always turns off the XTABS stty bit when in visual
mode, making terminals that do special things with ^I work.
The editor now knows about terminals with destructive tabs, like
the teleray 1061, having the xt option.
A bug that caused going past column 80 on terminals with insert line
but not insert char (like the mime, h1500, or i100) to mess up the
screen has been fixed.
A bug on 2621's that causes lines longer than 80 chars long with
embedded tabs to mess up when a tab was inserted has been fixed.
A bug that caused the wrong line to suddenly appear under very
rare circumstances involving small window sizes and long lines
where a search left the cursor on the top line of the screen
has been fixed.
The bug that caused inverse video to sometimes be scrolled up
into the file from an error message has been fixed.
The join command has been fixed, so that '3,3j' no longer joins
lines 3 and 4. ('3j' still does.) Thus, '/a/;/b/-j' works right
even if b is found on the line after a.
ex -v now finds your .exrc. In related changes, the default in
vi is now magic and nobeautify.
If your buffer is empty, ex won't refuse to do an edit, quit,
or tag command because you haven't done a write.
A bug causing visual undo not to work after '1,$!cat' has been
fixed.
Ex now decides for itself whether to use CBREAK or TIOCSETN
by whether they are defined in <sgtty.h>. This eliminates much
of the #ifdef USG or V6 lines. One USG line remains due to a bug
in the USG tty driver at 1200 baud.
Note that this will mess up if you use libretro because <sgtty.h>
has CBREAK and TIOCSETN defined. Take these out of sgtty.h to fix this.
Termcap options TI and TE have been added. These strings are
respectively output at the beginning and end of the editing session.
Values for the set command may now include `\ ' for space and
control characters.
Changes have been made to /etc/termcap (several new fields have
been added) and to termlib (it now looks for TERMCAP in the environment
and treats it as a termcap entry if the name of the terminal mentioned
is the same as TERM and the entry doesn't start with a slash.
If it starts with a slash it is treated as a filename, as before.
Termcap also checks the 512 byte entry limit and skips lines beginning
with # as comments. It is possible to define one terminal as being
similar to another one with a few differences without making two
copies of the description.) New termcap fields:
ti terminal initialization string. This should be sent
out at the beginning of any program that addresses
the cursor.
te Like te but at end of the program.
(Thanks to adb for these two fields)
us Start underlining.
ue End underlining.
uc Underline one character & move over it.
hc (bool) terminal is hardcopy
ns (bool) terminal doesn't scroll (tektronix)
ff (bool) hardcopy knows ^L means formfeed.
pt (bool) hardware tabs, maybe set by is
xt (bool) destructive tabs (teleray 1061)
ku sequence sent by keypad "up" arrow
kd "down" arrow
kl "left" arrow
kr "right" arrow
kh "home" arrow
ks sequence to make keypad send these codes
ke sequence to make keypad not send these codes.
k0-k9 sequences sent by up to 10 "other" keys
l0-l9 labels on k0-k9. If omitted, default = "f0" - "f9".
ko additional keys on keypad, in terms of their
termcap entry. For example, if "home down" and "clear"
are present and send the same codes as ll and cl, use
:ko=cl,ll:
tc This entry is a list of differences from the named
entry. THIS MUST BE THE LAST FIELD. Example: hp2621
with no ks or ke (e.g. null string):
hn|hp2621nl:ks@:ke@:tc=hp2621:
The @ cancels the string even if it is defined later.
Version 2.8 -- July 18, 1979
It is now possible to backspace over the first character (:, /, or ?)
on the echo line from visual. The effect is as though delete were hit
except the bell isn't rung.
The trailing slash in global commands is now optional.
g/pat means g/pat/p
(This change, as well as the corresponding changes to the substitute
command and r.e. address are also in the latest version of ed.)
The j, k, and l keys now move the cursor down, up, and right,
respectively, in visual mode, as they used to do (and still do on
3a's). This is to avoid the creeping of these keys into the map
descriptions of terminals and to compensate for the lack of arrow
keys on terminals like HP's.
Two arguments given to a newline command now print the range of
lines instead of just the last line (as though 'p' were appended).
To make forms like /foo/;/bar/ still work, the ; operator sets
the dot as before but then forgets everything to the left of the ;.
The + option invoked from the shell or the edit command has
two new forms: +/pat and +?pat
These cause the initial line to be chosen by a search for the
pattern pat. Note that if any special characters are in the
argument (such as ^, $, and even ?) it must be quoted.
Two new options are added: autowrite (aw) and hardtabs (ht).
Autowrite is a toggle, off by default. When on, if you have
unsaved changes before a context switching command, a write
is done automatically. The commands that may write are !,
next, and tag. Note that there is an equivalent way to do the
command with autowrite set without the write in each case:
shell, tag!, and edit do not write.
Hardtabs is a numeric option,, set to 8 by default.
Changing this to, say, 4, tells ex that either your system
expands tabs to every 4 spaces, or your terminal has hardware
tabs set every 4 spaces.
A bug that caused strange behaviour when an echo line contained
more than 79 characters (from a long : command or one or more long
filenames) has been patched by not printing any such characters
past column 79.
Handling of systems with nonstandard locations of files (where
the maintainer of ex is not a superuser and cannot create files
with names like /usr/lib/ex2.0strings or /etc/termcap) has been
improved. If the file can't be found as is, it is tried in the
current directory. If that fails, ex tries to run without it.
(Previously it bombed immediately if the error message file wasn't
in /usr/lib.)
Shell commands containing ! or % characters are no longer echoed
when in hush mode (as in 'ex -' from a shell file.)
Version 2.7 -- June 10, 1979
An inefficiency introduced in version 2.3, which increased the
amount of time spent preparing output by approximately 30 percent
has been corrected.
A bug which caused ``wrapmargin'' to work as though all hardcopy
terminals were 160 columns wide has been corrected.
A bug which caused the display to become confused after the display
of a long line at the bottom of the screen was suppressed (being
replaced temporarily by an @) has been fixed. Previously, under
some circumstances (e.g. after a put created the situation), scrolling
up of the following text would cause the display of this long
line to be skipped, so that the @ line would remain and the line
itself would not be displayed.
Version 2.6 -- June 2, 1979
A bug which prevented the first field separator in a tags file
from beginning with a blank has been fixed; if the separator
was a blank previously, the tag would not be found in the tags file.
A bug which caused the display to be messed up after a ``:''
escape which created long lines has been fixed. Previously
a substitute command which changed the last few lines on the screen
to be very long would leave the screen messed up.
A bug in display after 2 successive ``undo'' commands has been fixed.
Previously if you opened new lines on the display, and then did
2 successive undo commands, the display would be messed up after the
second undo if your terminal had insert/delete line.
A bug on intelligent terminals which caused unnecessary delete
character commands to be sent has been fixed. This occurred when
you did not have ``autoindent'' set, and opened a new line
below an existing line with tabs.
The change operations in open mode on hardcopy terminals has been
fixed. Previously there were several bugs in cursor placement
when the change extended to just before a tab character.
Several bugs in the handling of tabs in insert mode on intelligent
terminals have been fixed. Previously, tabs would often expand
incorrectly, leaving the wrong amount of white space, when an
insert occurred just before a tab.
A bug has been fixed which caused the editor to skip processing
of the ``.exrc'' file when the terminal type set in the
environment was unknown. The editor now processes ``.exrc'' in
this case.
[[A number of formatting changes have been made to the editor code
to eliminate unreasonably long lines. In addition, the code
from the Murray Hill and USG sites has been merged in conditionally,
so that all sites can compile from the same source.]]
Version 2.5 -- May 28, 1979
A bug which caused the VE sequence not to be sent when exiting
the editor via :q or :wq from visual has been fixed.
A bug which caused the command r^Q<ESC> to be weird when it
was repeated has been fixed.
The $ command now sets the column for future cursor motions to
effective infinity. Thus a `$' followed by up/down cursor motions
moves at the right margin of each line.
[[Internal: a bug in conditional compilation without the LISP
features has been fixed.]]
Several bugs relating to insert mode and intelligent terminals
have been fixed:
A bug which caused inserts on HP/DATAMEDIA like terminals to act
strangely when the material was inserted immediately before a tab
has been fixed.
A bug which caused the insertion of full tabs to not appear to
insert as many spaces as required (under strange circumstances)
has been fixed.
A bug which caused inserts on terminals with insert/delete line
but no insert/delete character to act strangely if the insert
caused a line to overflow has been fixed.
The ``expreserve'' program has been improved; you now will get
mail if a file is saved for you as a result of your phone being
hung up accidentally.
Version 2.4 -- May 19, 1979
A bug during inserts on intelligent terminals which occasionally
caused double ``~~'' characters on the last few lines of the display
rather than just single `~' characters has been fixed.
The w W b B e and E operations in visual now wrap around line
boundaries. Thus a sequence of enough w commands will get to any
word below the current position in the file, and b's will back
up to any place before. Thus these are more like the sentence
operations ( and ). You still can't back around line boundaries
duing inserts however.
Version 2.3 -- May 13, 1979
The P command to ex is now a synonym for p, so that 1,$P works,
if you don't let up on the shift key soon enough.
The / and ? operations within visual and open now hit later
(or earlier resp) occurrences of the same string on the same
line. This makes scans using / and ? much more useful. You
can move to the right on the current line by typing /pref<ESC>
where `pref' is a prefix of the word you wish to move to, and
delete to a following string `str' by doing d/str<ESC> if it is
on the same or succeeding line. Previously the command
d/pat/
deleted lines through the next line containing `pat'; it now
deletes text up to the next instance of `pat'. To delete to
the next line containing `pat', do
d/pat/0
which is short for
d/pat/+0
In general if you use an offset after the scanning pattern,
whole lines will always be affected.
Several bugs relating to the setting of the previous context mark
`` have been fixed, including one which caused operations such as
d`` or c`` to occasionally dump core. In particular, the operations
( ) { } [[ ]] and %
now set the previous context mark correctly, and the mark is set
even if the motion by these operations lands in the same line.
More optimization is now done on output cursor motions. This
is particularly much better on HP terminals which have
ridiculously long cursor addressing sequences. A new
capability has been added to the termcap file to aid this:
``bt'' (backtab). Thanks to Chuck Haley for the new code to
implement this.
A bug has been fixed on intelligent terminals which caused part
of the screen to be accidentally erased during insertions.
This occurred only on the first line on the screen, when it
became longer than one displayed line and only if a part of
the screen (at the top) was currently not in use.
A bug has been fixed which caused the command ``dp'' to be interpreted
as ``delete to register p''. This normally went unnoticed since
the ``autoprint'' option would cause the effect which the ``p'' was
forcing.
Version 2.2 -- May 6, 1979
"d)" now deletes a line if the current line is a sentence rather
than leaving an empty line.
The command
:s/str
now deletes str if it can find it; previously it was an error.
The editor now handles multiple ":" escapes correctly; previously
the screen would not be redrawn necessitating a ^L to fix it if you
gave a `:!command' to ``[Hit return to continue]''.
Recursive calls to visual from within open or visual are no longer
permitted. Previously ``:vi'' from within open mode would eventually
leave the editor in a strange state.
The %age in the status line is now correctly printed on 11's;
Previously internal 16-bit overflows often caused it to be incorrect.
The editor now ignores a ":" in front of commands.
Thus you can say ``:read foo'' within ex.
A bug which caused commands involving ]] to not be repeatable has
been fixed. Previously ``d]]'' followed by ``.'' caused an error.
"ayw now works correctly. Previously this silently did nothing.
Several bugs in "recover" and "ex -r" have been fixed. Thanks
to Andy Koenig for the fixes.
In input mode in open and visual ^V (like tenex) is now equivalent
to ^Q (which is reminiscent of ITS) superquoting the next character.
A later version of the UNIX tty driver will implement the standard for
^S ^Q handshaking and make ^Q unusable.
There are several typos on page 3 of the ``edit'' manual section:
s/move "a/delete a/
s/"a move ./put a/
/move to copy/s//delete to yank/
Version 2.1 -- April 5, 1979
Invoking ex via
ex -l
now sets "lisp" and "showmatch". This is suitable for invocations
from within Franz Lisp. If you don't like "showmatch", you can
still use "ex -l", just put the command
set noshowmatch
in your .exrc file.