Changes to the NE editor ------------------------ This document contains details of changes to the specification of the NE editor that have been made since the 1st edition of the manual was printed. It was last updated on 14 July 1999, to correspond to NE version 1.26. Changes to version 1.26 (14-Jul-99) ----------------------------------- 1. The cl command may now take a hexadecimal string as its (optional) argument, for example cl x/0d/. Changes to version 1.25 (12-Dec-97) ----------------------------------- 1. The command "ne" is a synonym for "newbuffer". 2. It is possible to compile a separate binary, in which all regular expressions are treated as Perl-style regular expressions, using the PCRE library. The "unixregexp" command is ignored, and the metacharacter in replacement strings with the r qualifier is $ rather than %. The version number (displayed at start up) ends with "P" if Perl-style regular expressions are in use. You can also tell which binary you have got by entering an invalid regular expression. The normal binary tells you whether unixregexp is set or not; the Perl-style binary says nothing after the error message. Changes for DOS NE version 1.23 (14-Dec-94) ------------------------------------------- The Ctrl-Left and Ctrl-Right arrows are now bound to word back and word forward respectively by default; this ties in with PC conventions. Changes to version 1.20 (10-Oct-94) ----------------------------------- 1. On some systems (Unix systems in particular) NE exits from its screen- handling mode before obeying a system command introduced with *. This means that, when reading a line of NE commands afterwards, the normal line-by-line input conventions are in force instead of those used when in screen mode, and NE's command line history mechanism is not available. To indicate this, the prompt that is given in these circumstances has been changed to "NE:" instead of "NE>". Not all implementations of NE operate in this way; for those that don't the prompt after a * command will still be "NE>". 2. The {WORD-LEFT} and {WORD-RIGHT} keystrokes no longer stop at individual non-word characters. They now stop at the marked points in the following example: a,bc,d ^ ^ ^ Previously they would have stopped at the comma characters as well. 3. The {WORD-LEFT} and {WORD-RIGHT} keystrokes now operate when reading in a command line in screen mode. 4. Two new keystrokes called {DELETE-TO-WORD-LEFT} and {DELETE-TO-WORD-RIGHT} have been implemented. There are also corresponding commands DTWL and DTWR commands. The keystrokes are not associated with any keypresses by default; the mnemonic names used in the KEY command to set them up are "dtwl" and "dtwr". The DTWR operation deletes characters to the right in the current line, starting from the character at the cursor, and ending at the last character before the next position in which a {WORD-RIGHT} cursor-moving operation would stop. In other words, it deletes everthing from the current position to the start of the next word. The DTWL operation deletes characters to the left in the current line, starting at the character preceding the cursor position, and ending with the character at which a {WORD-LEFT} cursor-moving operation would stop. In other words, it deletes back to the start of the previous word. Note that, unlike the {WORD-LEFT} and {WORD-RIGHT} keystrokes, these operations never move to a different current line. If issued at the start of end of a line (respectively), they have no effect. They do, however, operate when NE is reading a line of commands in screen mode. 5. There is a new command called PBUFFER, which operates like the BUFFER command, but cycles through the buffers in the opposite order. By default, {KEYSTRING-11} is set up to obey PBUFFER. 6. NE has in the past been very conservative in choosing which characters it is prepared to display in screen mode. It has stuck to the printable ASCII characters with codes in the range 32-126, and displayed any other data characters as question marks. On some systems, however, so-called "top-bit-set" or "eightbit" characters with codes in the range 160-255 are meaningful, and are used for additional graphics. A new command called EIGHTBIT controls whether NE displays these additional characters or not. It can be called with either of the argument words ON or OFF; if called with no argument, it changes to the opposite state. The default setting depends on the NE implementation. On Unix systems, the display of these characters depends on the terminal being used, and since this cannot be predicted, the default setting is OFF. 7. The following additional escape combinations have been added to those recognized by NE when interpreting regular expressions in "Unix style": \d matches a decimal digit \D matches a character which is not a decimal digit \s matches a white space character (space or tab) \S matches a character which is not a white space character \w matches a "word" character (as defined by the WORD command) \W matches a character which is not a "word" character 8. The command SHOW WORDCHARS causes NE to display the list of characters that are set as being "word" characters. 9. The command SHOW SETTINGS causes NE to display the state of a number of option settings, such as the eightbit character display option. The values for the readonly and prompt options apply to the current buffer only. 10. It is now possible to specify "-" as the file name for the -with and -ver command line keys, as well as for the -from and -to keys. The effect of "-with -" is to cause editing commands to be read from the standard input (which is the default), but in line-by-line mode. The effect of "-ver -" is likewise to cause verification output to be written to the standard output. (This is also the default - the syntax is really provided just for consistency.) The preferred method of calling NE from within a Unix shell script to edit a file using inline editing commands is now thus: ne somefile -with - < End NE will diagnose an error if both -from and -with are specified (explicitly or implicitly) as the standard input. This also happens if -to and -ver are both specified explicitly as the standard output. If only -to is specified as the standard output, the default for -ver is changed to the standard error stream. 11. Keyboard interrupts are now recognized while scanning through large files as a result of the {SCROLL-BOTTOM} keystroke, and also while reading a file as a result of obeying the command M* on a partially-read input file. Changes for DOS NE version 1.20 ------------------------------- 1. Wildcard file specification now works on the MS-DOS version, as do multiple files; thus it is now possible (as on the Unix version) to type: ne f*.doc ne file.1 file.2 file.3 to place the matching files in different buffers; up to 9 files can be specified in this way. If the wildcard matches more than 9 files only the first 9 encountered in the directory are placed in buffers - the rest are ignored. 2. Bug fixes: Shift-Ctrl-_ was not recognised as ^_ Main key now definable as the special key 'ret' SET AUTOVSCROLL with greater than 1 did not work ****