NAME

ex − text editor

SYNOPSIS

ex [ − ] [ −v ] [ −t tag ] [ −r ] [ −R ] [ +command ] [ −l ] [ −x ] name ... 

REMARKS

The decryption facilities provided by this software are under the control of the United States Government and cannot be exported without special licenses.  These capabilities are only available by special arrangement through HP. 

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.

Most users access ex commands through the vi editor, but ex can also be used as a stand-alone interactive line editor without the full-screen display that makes vi popular among HP-UX users.  The vi command from ex and the Q command from vi can be used to switch back and forth between the two editors. 

This manual page entry does not contain sufficient information for a new user to learn ex. Ex and vi both access the same editor program.  The vi/ex program has been documented at length in the vi/ex Editor tutorial in the Text Editors and Processors volume of HP-UX Concepts and Tutorials.

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(4) 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 tag 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

Ex Command Addresses

Initializing options

Most useful options

Scanning pattern formation

WARNINGS

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. 

AUTHOR

Ex is based on software developed by the University of California, Berkeley.  The 16-bit extensions to ex are based in part on software of the Toshiba Corporation. 

FILES

SEE ALSO

awk(1), ctags(1), ed(1), edit(1), grep(1), sed(1), vi(1), curses(3X), term(7), terminfo(4).  The vi/ex Editor tutorial in the Text Editors and Processors volume of HP-UX Concepts and Tutorials.

INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT

8-bit and 16-bit data, 8-bit file names, messages. 

Hewlett-Packard Company  —  May 11, 2021