EX(1) BSD General Commands Manual EX(1)NAME
ex, edit — text editor
SYNOPSISex [-] [-v] [-t tag] [-r] [[+command]] [-l] name ...
edit [ex options]
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(1) and requires a CRT.
For users unfamiliar with ed(1), the editor edit is probably easier to
learn. It avoids some of the complexities of ex used mostly by systems
programmers and persons comfortable with the ed(1) editor.
DOCUMENTATION
The following documentation is found in the “UNIX User's Manual
Supplementary Documents”:
Edit: A tutorial provides a comprehensive introduction to edit assuming
no previous knowledge of computers or the UNIX system.
Ex Reference Manual - Version 3.7 is a comprehensive and complete manual
for the command mode features of ex, but you cannot learn to use the edi‐
tor 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(1); the material in the introductory and
advanced documents works also with ex.
An Introduction to Display Editing with Vi introduces the display editor
vi(1) and provides reference material on vi(1). In addition, the Vi
Quick Reference card summarizes the commands of vi(1) in a useful, func‐
tional way, and is useful with the introduction.
ENVIRONMENT
The ex command uses the following environment variables.
EXINIT User specified startup values for ex.
HOME Default directory to search for the file ~/.exrc
SHELL Shell used for escaped commands (with the ! command).
TERM Terminal type.
TERMCAP Alternate termcap file.
FILES
/usr/libexec/ex?.?strings error messages
/usr/libexec/ex?.?recover recover command
/usr/libexec/ex?.?preserve preserve command
/usr/share/misc/termcap describes capabilities of terminals
~/.exrc editor startup file
/tmp/Exnnnnn editor temporary
/tmp/Rxnnnnn named buffer temporary
/var/preserve preservation directory
SEE ALSOawk(1), ed(1), grep(1), sed(1), grep(1), vi(1), termcap(5), environ(7)HISTORY
Ex appeared in 3BSD.
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 resul‐
tant files.
4th Berkeley Distribution June 21, 1993 4th Berkeley Distribution