


      EX(1)                       (bsd 4.1)                       EX(1)



      NAME
           ex - text editor

      SYNTAX
           ex [ - ] [ -v ] [ -t tag ] [ -r ] [ +command ] [ -l ] name
           ...

      DESCRIPTION
           Ex is the root of a family of editors:  edit, ex 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 not used ed, or are a casual user, you will find
           that the editor edit is convenient for you.  It avoids some
           of the complexities of ex used mostly by systems programmers
           and persons very familiar with ed.

           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 document Edit: A tutorial provides a comprehensive
           introduction to edit assuming no previous knowledge of
           computers.

           The Ex Reference Manual - Version 3.1 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.

      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 termcap(5) 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).



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           There is also an interline editing open (o) command which
           works on all terminals.

           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.  Press ^D to cause the editor to scroll a
           half-window of text; this is more useful than RETURN for
           stepping through a file quickly.  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 don't 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.

           You can use the substitute command in ex to systematically
           convert the case of letters between upper and lower case.
           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



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           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.

      FILES
           /usr/lib/ex?.?recover         recover command
           /usr/lib/ex?.?preserve        preserve command
           /etc/termcap             describes capabilities of terminals
           ~/.exrc                  editor startup file
           /tmp/Exnnnnn             editor temporary
           /tmp/Rxnnnnn             named buffer temporary
           /usr/preserve            preservation directory

      SEE ALSO
           awk(1), ed(1), grep(1), sed(1), edit(1), grep(1),
           termcap(5), vi(1)

      AUTHOR
           University of California, Berkeley.

      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 don't 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.



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