[CentOS] Help using ed [OT]

Mon Sep 1 20:40:13 UTC 2008
William L. Maltby <CentOS4Bill at triad.rr.com>

On Mon, 2008-09-01 at 10:26 -0700, Bill Campbell wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 01, 2008, William L. Maltby wrote:
> >
> >On Sun, 2008-08-31 at 19:45 +0200, Thomas Johansson wrote:
> >> Hi
> >> 
> >> Perhaps omeone might answer this tricky problem. I can do this other 
> >> ways, but i really want to understand how to solve it using ed. I have 
> >> one solution using g/re/s/re//txt/ , but I want to understand how or if 
> >> i can solve it using the ed (.)a command.
> ><snip>

> Instead of ``ed' one can use ``ex'' which should be in any distribution as
> its part of ``vi'' or ``vim''.  I think the command set of ``ed'' is a
> subset of ``ex'' so scripts should work the same.

Further, it *may* be that the "superset" that is available in ex can
overcome of few of the deficiencies and hurdles that his use of ed is
presenting. Because of my background, I never read about or learned the
full ex stuff - vi(m), sed, (g)awk, bash, ... all did what I needed.

Maybe if the OP reviews the ex stuff he'll have an easier time of it.

Only potential downside I see is maybe a little more overhead and the
need for vi(m)/ex on the target system. *Usually* they are there, but
maybe someone is a "minimalist" there?

> 
> I frequently use the gnu shtool program for this sort of thing unless the
> job is very simple, and I really want to edit the file in place.
> 
> Bill

-- 
Bill (the other one)