Re: [Bug-ed] GNU ed 1.11-rc1 released

[Martin Guy]

On 08/02/2015, Andrew L. Moore <address@hidden> wrote:
> Antonio Diaz Diaz wrote:
>> * The "z" command has been fixed. ("zN" printed N + 1 lines). This bug was
>> present since at least ed-0.2.
>
> This bug exists in the *BSD ed’s as well, unfortunately.
>
> Though documented otherwise in the ed man page (ed.1), the intent of the
> command `zN’ is to set the window size to N

I think we may mean different things by the word "window" which in
1974 could not refer to little boxes on bitmapped screens (as there
weren't any!). I remember the "window" being the height of the
letterbox through which we peered at our source files on text-only
glass teletypes, so "z" let you change the height of that letterbox.

I don't have the source of the original Berkeley ed any more, but the
original ex, which extends ed, behaves in the same way as the
newly-corrected GNU ed, i.e. z10 prints 10 lines. And the "10" is not
persistent to following "z"'s.

Hope this helps.

   M.