[TUHS] ed: multiple addresses (with semicolons)

[markus schnalke]

Hoi,

thanks for your replies, Doug and Ken.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to find the ``Multics Condensed Guide''
on multicians.org. Can someone please provide a link?


Interrestingly, I discovered that qed had double quotes (") as a
comment command, which simply ignores the rest of the line. As far
as I know, there's no way to comment ed scripts. Why was that
dropped?

In ex(1) the " comment command reappeared. I've always wondered
why it used this character for comments. Seems it comes from qed,
leaping over ed, but reappearing in ex.


meillo



[2022-07-08 09:01] Ken Thompson <kenbob at gmail.com>
> On Fri, Jul 8, 2022 at 6:24 AM Douglas McIlroy <douglas.mcilroy at dartmouth.edu>
> wrote:
> 
>     The interpretation of a string of addresses separated by commas and/or
>     semicolons was already defined in the v1 man page for ed.
> 
>     Ed was essentially a stripped-down version of Multics qed. The latter
>     was originally
>     written by Ken. Unfortunately the "Multics Condensed Guide" online at
>     multicians.org describes how strings of addresses were interpreted
>     only by canonical examples for the various editing requests.
> 
>     I  have no specific memory of semicolons in qed. I have a vague
>     recollection that semicolons originated in ed, however you should put
>     no trust in this. Maybe Ken remembers.
> 
>     Doug
> 
> String of addresses was same for qed and ed.
>