Re: [Bug-ed] g /RE/COMMAND-LIST not working ?

[Paul Jackson]

Antonio wrote:

The online ed manual is already fixed:

 

http://www.gnu.org/software/ed/manual/ed_manual.html#Commands

 

Thanks again for reporting this.

 

BTW, these typos are in the manual since ed 0.1 (1993). It is surprising

that nobody (not even myself!) had noticed them until now.

 

 

The above online ed manual looks to me to be based on the man page, not on the info page.

 

The ed man page, at least as far back as early 1990's ed-0.2, which I have on my disk right now, and at least as far back as late 1970's Version 7 Unix (man page for that ed here: http://modman.unixdev.net/?manpath=v7man&page=ed&sektion=1) always had that correct.

 

It seems to be just the info page which has this error.  Since I am a long time man page user, and almost as long a time info page avoider, I had never previously noticed any errors in "info ed".

 

I am reading the "info ed" pages now for the first time.  Here's what else I notice that looks either wrong, or at least dubious, to me.  (Do beware that I usually run ed 0.2, not GNU Ed 1.10, so my comments below may reflect my archaic expectations.)

 

===

 

1. In the "2 Introduction to line editing" section, it ways "<BACKSPACE> (sometimes labeled <DELETE> or <DEL>)".  This is dubious in my view.  At least on every keyboard I've typed on, backspace removed the -previous- character just before the cursor, while delete entered an ANSI escape sequence which in some screen modes removes the -next- character, just after the cursor.  However, perhaps some users do have their keyboard setup to have the delete character delete the previous character, so perhaps this item is technically correct.

 

2. In the same section, the "*,w junk" example is a bit silly, as the default address range for the "w" command is the whole buffer ... the explicit comma ',' can be omitted (this is neither wrong nor dubious ... just me nit picking.)

 

3. In the same section, it says "Comments begin with a '#'."    It would be more accurate, in my view, to have said "Commands  beginning with a '#' are taken as comments and ignored."  (Input mode lines that begin with '#' are just more input, otherwise it would require tricky use of the 's' command or some other such workaround  to enter '#' comment lines into code.)

 

4. In the section "3 Invoking ed", it states of the --restricted option "This mode disables edition of files ...".  Typo.  Should be "This mode disables editing of files ...".

 

5. In the section "6 Commands", when removing spaces from the 'g' and 'G' commands, don't forget to also remove spaces from the 'v' and 'V' commands.  So far as I have noticed, spaces are allowed and harmless on other commands.

 

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Perhaps some of the above will prove useful.  Thanks for continuing to keep this ancient dog alive ... it's been my "home away from home" for a long time now.

 

--

Paul Jackson

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