Editors

University of Wisconsin Madison

Computer Systems Lab CS1000

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Editors

   

The simplest way to create a text file is to type cat > textfile and enter the desired text followed by Control-d. This is fine for small files, but you won't be able to do any editing besides backspacing on the line you're currently typing. To edit a file you must use an editor. Two popular editors among Unix users are Emacs and Vi. To invoke either editor, simply enter emacs textfile or vi textfile, where textfile is the name of the file you wish to edit. If the file does not already exist, the editor will create it for you. Both editors offer an overwhelming variety of commands. The following sections will provide enough information to get you started using either editor, but do not provide a good tutorial on them. Emacs provides its own information pages and a tutorial. The man pages for Vi provide a convenient summary of commands, but will do nothing for the novice. A tutorial document on Vi is available through the web (URL http://www.cs.wisc.edu/csl/cs1000/vi.tutor) and DoIT sells a fairly large ``introduction'' to Vi.





Caitlin Howell
Thu Jan 16 20:24:40 CST 1997