ex.1 (2010 09)

e
ex(1) ex(1)
The pathname of the file being edited by
ex is referred to as the current file. The text of the file shall
be read into a working version of the file (called
buffer in this clause), and all editing changes shall be
performed on that version; the changes shall have no effect on the original file until an
ex command
causes the file to be written out. Lines in the buffer may be limited to 4096 characters including 2-3 bytes
for overhead. Thus a line length up to 4092 characters should cause no problem. An error message may
be written if the limit is exceeded during editing.
The
alternate pathname is the name of the last file mentioned in an editor command, or the previous
current pathname if the last file mentioned became the current file. When the
% appears in a pathname
entered as part of a command argument, it shall be replaced by the altername pathname. Any character,
including
% and # shall retain its literal value when preceded by a backslash.
When an error occurs,
ex shall alert ther terminal and write a message.
If the system crashes,
ex shall attempt to preserve the buffer if any unwritten changes were made. The
command-line option -r can be used to retrieve the saved changes.
During initialization (before the first file is read or any user commands from the terminal are processed),
if the environment variable
EXINIT is set, the editor shall execute
ex commands contained in that
variable. If the variable is not set,
ex shall attempt to read commands from the $HOME/.exrc. If and
only if
EXINIT or $HOME/.exrc sets the editor option exrc, ex finally shall attempt to read commands
from a file .exrc in the current directory. In the event that
EXINIT is not set and the current direc-
tory is the home directory of the user, any
.exrc file shall only be processed once. No
.exrc shall be
read unless it is owned by the same user ID as the effective user ID of the process. After any
.exrc files
are processed, any commands specified by the
-c option shall be processed.
By default,
ex shall start in the command mode, which shall be indicated by the ":" prompt. The input
mode can be entered by append, insert,orchange commands. There is one other mode, visual mode,
in which full screen editing is available. This is described more fully under the visual command. The
command line can consist of multiple ex commands separated by vertical-line characters(|). The use of
commands that enter input or visual modes in this manner, unless they are the final command on the
line, produces undefined results.
Command lines beginning with the double-quote character (") shall be ignored. This can be used for com-
ments in an editor script.
WARNINGS
The undo command causes all marks to be lost on lines that are changed and then restored.
The
z command prints a number of logical rather than physical lines. More than a screenful of output
can result if long lines are present.
Null characters are discarded in input files and cannot appear in resultant files.
On some systems, the recovery of an edit file with the
-r option is possible only if certain system-
dependent actions are taken when the system is restarted.
Edit preserve files can only be recovered on systems running the same HP-UX release in which they were
preserved. Preserve files are not recoverable across different releases.
On HP terminals, the attribute field of any function key specified by a
map #n ... command should be set
to normal rather than to the default of transmit.
Do not use the
-C option to edit unencrypted files. The -C option is meant to be used only on files that
are already encrypted. If the -C option is used on files which are not yet encrypted, a write in the edit
session is likely to corrupt the file.
For information about line length limits, file size limits, etc., see the WARNINGS section of vi(1).
EXIT STATUS (UNIX Standard Only)
For information about the UNIX standard environment, see standards (5).
The
ex utility shall exit with one of the following values:
0 Successful completion.
>0 An error occurred.
AUTHOR
ex was developed by the University of California, Berkeley. The 16-bit extensions to ex are based in
part on software of the Toshiba Corporation.
18 Hewlett-Packard Company − 18 − HP-UX 11i Version 3: September 2010