ex (text editor)
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Cross-platform | |
---|---|
Type | Text editor |
ex, short for EXtended,
History
The original Unix editor, distributed with the
ex was eventually given a full-screen visual interface (adding to its command line oriented operation), thereby becoming the vi text editor. In recent times, ex is implemented as a personality of the vi program; most variants of vi still have an "ex mode", which is invoked using the command ex
, or from within vi for one command by typing the :
(colon) character. Although there is overlap between ex and vi functionality, some things can only be done with ex commands, so it remains useful when using vi.
Relation to vi
The core ex commands which relate to search and replace are essential to vi. For instance, the ex command :%s/XXX/YYY/g
replaces every instance of XXX with YYY, and works in vi too. The % means every line in the file. The 'g' stands for global and means replace every instance on every line (if it was not specified, then only the first instance on each line would be replaced).
Command-line invocation
Synopsis
ex [-rR] [-s|-v] [-c command] [-t tagstring] [-w size] [file...]
Options
- -r
- recover specified files after a system crash
- -R
- sets readonly
- -s
- (XPG4only) suppresses user-interactive feedback
- -v
- invoke visual mode (vi)
- -c command
- Execute command on first buffer loaded from file. May be used up to ten times.
- -t tagstring
- Edit the file containing the specified tag
- -w size
- Set window size
- -
- (obsolete) suppresses user-interactive feedback
- -l
- Enable lisp editor mode
- -x
- Use encryption when writing files
- -C
- encryption option
- file
- The name(s) of the file(s) to be edited
See also
- List of Unix commands
References
- ^ vi editor history:ex
- ^ "A Brief History of Vim:1976". Archived from the original on 2021-06-05. Retrieved 2021-06-05.
- ^ ex manual page
- ^ William N. Joy, Ex reference manual, November, 1977
- The Single UNIX Specification, Version 4 from The Open Group
- ^ George Coulouris: Bits of History
- ^ Salus, Peter H. (2005). The Daemon, the Gnu and the Penguin. Groklaw.
External links
- The Single UNIX Specification, Version 4 from The Open Group : text editor – Shell and Utilities Reference,