HP OpenVMS Systems

Text Search and Replace tools? (take II)

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The Question is:

 
Substituting in EDT with search-pattern of BOL/EOL?
 
Is there a way to use Beginning-Of-Line and End-Of-Line (escape-characters) as
 search-patterns when substituting text in EDT?
If Yes; What's the escape-charaters?
 
 

The Answer is :

 
  Please see topic (4676), among others.
 
  You will want to learn a new text editor, as EDT is old and slow and
  limited, and it was retired some time ago.  EDT was replaced by TPU,
  and TPU provides EVE and EDT interfaces.
 
  EVE (which, as stated earlier, can be configured to provide a good
  emulation of EDT), LSE, TECO and other text editors can search for
  this string.  Languages such as Perl, Python, and DCL are also
  reasonable choices.  As are awk and grep and other tools.
 
  There is no such thing as a "Beginning-Of-Line" character, and the
  particular characters (if any) used to mark the end of a line within
  a sequential file can (and do) vary (by sequential file format).  In
  some sequential file formats, the end of line is determined based on
  the record length, while in other formats a carriage return and/or a
  linefeed character marks the end of the record.  These are individual
  characters, and are not device control (escape) sequences.
 
  Within most (all?) TPU-based editors, CTRL/V provides a mechanism
  which permits direct entry of the CTRL/M (carriage return), CTRL/J
  (linefeed), and CTRL/L (formfeed) characters, among others.
 
  Within LSEDIT, the command would be:
    SUBSTITUTE/PATTERN/ALL "\<\W\W" "NewText"
 
  Within DCL, a procedure that locates blank lines would require
  roughly a dozen lines of DCL or so.  Several examples of DCL file
  manipulation programs are available in the Ask The Wizard area.
 
  For various TPU examples and tools, see SYS$EXAMPLES:*.TPU.
 
  Please see topics (4676) and (3756), among others.
 

  

     

     
answer written or last revised on ( 25-FEB-2002 )
     
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