C/C++ Interactive Reference Guide

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QED VERSION: 1.22 LAST COMPILE DATE: 15 DECEMBER 1987 DOCUMENTATION DATE: 13 APRIL 1987 PCDOS VERSION: 2.1 AND HIGHER AUTHORS: Nigel Gilbert and James Haefner --------------------------------------------------------------------- TABLE OF CONTENTS I. GENERAL DESCRIPTION II. HOW TO RUN QED WITHOUT READING THE MANUAL III. COMMAND LINE INVOCATION IV. DEFINITION OF CONTROL KEYS A. CURSOR MOVEMENT B. BLOCK MOVES (Save, Exit, Move text) C. DELETIONS D. "QUICK" MOVES (Find/Alter, Defaults, File manipulation) E. PARAGRAPH REFORM F. VERSION DOCUMENTATION V. TRICKS A. UNDO B. INSERTING ESCAPE SEQUENCES INTO TEXT C. EDITING SEARCH LINES D. DEFAULT FILE EXTENSIONS E. JUMPS F. MARKING TEXT VI. BUGS VII. TABLE OF CONTROL CHARACTERS --------------------------------------------------------------------- I. GENERAL DESCRIPTION QED is a public domain editor originally written in C by Nigel Gilbert of England. His version was written in BDS C (trademark) for microcomputers running CP/M versions 2.x and 3.0. The original Gilbert version is available from the C User's Group (McPherson, Kansas). I (J. Haefner) made major modifications to this original code for CP/M, ported these modifications to MSDOS and PCDOS. QED comes in a variety of flavors depending on the target computer; QEDPC is the version that runs on IBM-PCs and compatibles. Below, QED and QEDPC are synonymous. QED is a full-screen editor that it attempts to duplicate the user interface of WordStar (tm) as closely as possible, with "improvements" as I have seen fit. (As a full- screen editor, it bears no resemblence to line editors such as EDLIN or SOS.) There are no "modes" in the sense of some screen editors in which one must explicitly choose a "command" mode or a "input" mode. In QED, one is always in an "input" mode; commands to the editor that are not text to be inserted in the file are keyed in as control characters (i.e., characters transmitted by typing the "control key" and certain alphabetic and punctuation keys simultaneously, usually symbolized as ^x, where x is a character, e.g., ^C). QED is intended primarily as an editor for creating programs or keying in numerical data. As such, it has some features of interest to programmers and lacks many features of word processors. Obviously, it can also be used to create files of text to be sent to a text formatter such as RUNOFF. For the programmers, QED has auto-indent, "jump to" a line, an extensive list of command line options, search and replace, reformatting of indented program text, and an "expert" mode. It also has automatic word-wrap at a prescribed screen column setting and the ability to reform paragraphs to fit within a prescribed column setting. It lacks, alas, right justification, and printing formatting facilities. QED produces "straight ASCII" files, i.e., files containing no special formatting codes or printing control character sequences. As a result, QED is well-suited for creating files required by other applications or programs (e.g., OMNIPLOT plotting package, data entry for statistical programs, etc.). II. HOW TO RUN QED WITHOUT READING THE MANUAL 1. QEDPC occupies only 37K of disk space, so it can easily reside on any disk, drive A or B. 2. If you are a beginner, you will want the non-expert mode and the on-screen help to be permanently displayed. Assuming this, invoke QEDPC to begin a new file with: A>QEDPC -E -V (The "A>" is the PCDOS prompt indicating drive A as the default drive, of course.) This will present you with a status line at the top of the screen, about 6 lines of help messages, and the cursor over the point at which text may be inserted. 3. Insert text by typing any of the printable ASCII characters. Hit the "RETURN" key at the end of each line (no automatic word-wrap). 4. To save the text as a file type ^K (CTRL and K simultaneously). This will prompt you with a verbose, but informative instruction. To save the text and leave QEDPC, respond with Q, then W (after the prompt), then the file name (after the prompt), then E (after the prompt). In short, the sequence is ^KQWE. 5. To edit an existing file invoke QEDPC this way: A>QEDPC filename -E -V This will display a message reminding you of the name of the program you just typed, followed, after clearing the screen, by the first 23 lines of text of the file. QEDPC cannot distinguish text files from non-text files; therefore, garbage will appear if you attempt to edit an EXE file, or any other non-text file. 6. To move around in the file, type the control characters as indicated on the on-screen help (^QO), and as more fully described below (in the manual!). QEDPC has no "overwrite" mode, one is always inserting text, pushing existing text ahead of the cursor. Explicit deletion is required to remove this text. Exiting the editing session is the same as above. III. COMMAND LINE INVOCATION The official syntax of QEDPC 1.22 is: QEDPC [-Jn -A -B -L -H -R -Mn -Tn -S -U -V -E -X -Dd [filename1 [filename2]]] "[]" indicates optional input. "Filename1" is an optional file which QEDPC is to read in and "filename2" is an optional file to which QEDPC is to save any editing changes made. If "filename2" is absent, "filename1" is used. Each letter in the command line is an option that configures the "context" or "environment" of the current editing session. They have the following meanings and defaults []: -Jn: Jump to line n [1] -A : Autoindent on carriage return [YES] -B : Make backup file on exit (filename.bak) [YES] -L : Show line and column on statusline [YES] -H : Horizontal scroll entire screen [NO] -R : Read entire file on initial load [YES] -Mn: Margin (right) set to n [255] -Tn: Set tabwidth to n [4] -S : Strip trailing blanks and tabs [YES] -U : Update version and date [YES] -V : Display onscreen help [NO] -E : Expert (terse) mode [YES] -X : Warm boot on exit [YES] -Dd: Drive d for temporary paging files [current] Options and filename1 may occur in any order; filename2 must follow filename1. Upper and lower case may be used in any combination. Examples: QEDPC -j400 -e -T8 FOO.BAR foo2.bar This will invoke the version of QEDPC, will turn the expert mode off (-e), set the tabs to 8 spaces (-T8), read from FOO.BAR and write to FOO2.BAR, and jump to line 400 (-j400). QEDPC This will load QEDPC and present the user with a blank screen for data input. IV. DEFINITION OF CONTROL KEYS A complete map of the functions of all control keys (^x) is at the end of this documentation. Two (^Q and ^K) have no immediate effect, but prompt for more command input (see below). Typing ESC (escape key) at a prompt will cancel the request and usually returns the cursor to the text being edited. A. CURSOR MOVEMENT Cursor movement is controlled using control characters. The association of function with control key follows, in general, the pattern of WordStar (tm). For the most part, the function of control keys reachable from the left hand is identical to WordStar: the keys A-E-F-X form a diamond where the top of the diamond produces movement upwards, the left-side produces leftward movement, and so on. Vertical scrolling which leaves the cursor in place is implemented via ^W (scroll up through file) and ^Z (down). ^Y and ^V moves the cursor to the top and bottom, respectively, of the screen. ^U and ^B moves the cursor to the top and bottom, respectively, of the file. Thus, for the left side of the keyboard there exists a relatively uniform and mnemonic mapping of key position and cursor movement. QEDPC accepts lines up to 256 characters; longer lines are truncated. Lines with characters off the screen have a high- lighted ">" in the last column. Horizontal scrolling to columns greater than the screen width of the terminal occurs in two modes: only the present line is scrolled or all lines on the screen are scrolled horizontally. The current mode is changed with a toggle altered in the editing context option (see below). The default (scroll current line only) may be altered at the command line invocation of QEDPC. On the right-hand-side of the keyboard, there is a less suggestive mapping. ^O and ^P move the cursor to the left and right, respectively, end of the current line. ^I, ^N, and ^M implement standard ASCII interpretations of the control characters: tab, line feed (new line), and carriage return. QEDPC implements most of the important, common block movement functions: global search and replace, write block to file, block movement, block deletion, and block copy. In addition, the lines of a block may be "shifted" with tabs, spaces, or deletions. This is a boon to programmers using structured languages, since blocks may be explicitly indented using this feature. The block mode is also used to exit the editor and save, in accordance with the WordStar convention. Block activity is initiated as in WordStar with ^K. If "expert" mode is off, verbose prompts will appear on the screen; if "expert" mode is on, only the set of permissable letters is shown for prompt. The allowable responses are mnemonic and are summarized at the end. To define a block of text, place the cursor at the line from which the block definition is to be initiated (may be the bottom or the top of the block). (Block definition is by line, not by character as in WordStar, thus, only blocks of entire lines may be defined.) Type ^K, at the prompt make a choice of operation to perform on the block (copy, move, delete, etc.) and, at the prompt, use the cursor control keys to move the cursor to the last line of the block. When the last line is defined, hit <RETURN> and the function will be performed. Typing <ESC> (the escape key) will cancel the block operation at any point during prompting. If the "shift" operation is chosen, then, after the block is defined, another prompt requests an editing function to be performed on all lines in the block (e.g., insert tabs, delete characters, etc.). When <RETURN> is hit following input of the editing operations, then all lines in the block are subjected to those operations. In this way, a block of lines may be easily indented for formatting structured programs. Other block functions are self-explanatory. A rapid method to save a file and return to PCDOS is invoked by typing ^KX; analogous to WordStar. A second quick backup method is described below in subsection D. To write an edited file to disk and open another file for editing requires the following key strokes: ^KQWA. C. DELETIONS There are several ways to delete text. ^G deletes the character under the cursor; DEL deletes the character to the left of the cursor. ^T deletes from the cursor position to the end of the current word. ^QY deletes to the end of the line on which the cursor is currently lying; ^\\ deletes the whole thing. The sequence ^KBD allows the definition of a block to delete. BACKSPACE (^H) is synonymous with ^S: move the cursor one character to the left. D. "QUICK" MOVES INCLUDING SEARCH AND ALTER Following WordStar ^Q does "quick" movements. To find text type ^QF, to find and alter text type ^QA. (^L while inserting text (not after ^Q) will repeat the last search or alter command.) If the user chooses not to be queried for alter verification, QEDPC will not show the changes as they are made. If this is desired, use the <V>erbose option after the new text string is supplied. To toggle the onscreen help type ^QO. ^QL turns off the statusline at the top of the screen except the filename. This speeds screen display. In addition, ^QK clears the screen and displays the "context" or default settings for some variables of the current editing session. Among these are tab settings, whether a backup file will be saved, whether expert mode is on or off, the state of the onscreen help menu, the current maximum number of lines of text that may be edited, etc. A prompt is issued to instruct the user how to change any of these variables. In addition to altering variable values, ^QK followed by "F" (for "Files"), will clear the screen and prompt the user for input to erase files, change the name of the edited file, list the directory, change the path, etc. Quick backups of the currently edited file can be made via ^QB. This command concatenates the filename to a string which is the directory in which you wish to save the file. For example, if the current default quick backup directory is the string "B:\\" (i.e., the root directory of drive B) and the current file is "foobar.c", then "^QB" will produce the message "Saving B:\\FOOBAR.C" and save the file in the root directory of B. The directory string, which may be any legal PCDOS pathname, is specified with the "D" option of the editing context screen (^QKD). E. PARAGRAPH REFORM. QED has automatic wordwrap at a prescribed screen column set by typing ^QK (editing context). There are two mechanisms for reforming a paragraph. The first, using ^QP (for "quick prettification of paragraph"), will reform from the current line to either the next empty line, or the next line beginning with white space (space or TAB), or the end of the file, whichever is encountered first. The second method is to define a block of text (via ^KB) and choose the "<R>eform" operation. This method permits multiple paragraphs to be formatted. To disable automatic wordwrap, set the right margin (^QKR) to 255. F. VERSION DOCUMENTATION QEDPC can document the version number and date and time of the last save operation for the edited file. This information is stored as the first line of the file as a "comment". The user must insure that the appropriate comment delimiters are used. For example, WordStar and some other text formatting programs use two periods, "..", to indicate comments. Each programming language has its own; FORTRAN uses "C" or "*" in column 1; C uses "/*" and "*/" to indicate the beginning and end of comments; standard PASCAL uses "(*" and "*)" for the same purpose. This feature may be disabled via ^QKV or "-U" on the command line when initially invoking QEDPC (see section III above). VI. TRICKS A. UNDO QEDPC has two rudimentary mechanisms to "undo" or retract the last editing command (e.g., delete a word). Provided the cursor has not moved from the vertical screen row on which the editing operation was performed, ^_ (CTRL-underscore) will undo the operation. A deleted line (i.e., ^\\) can be recalled if the cursor has not left the vertical screen row on which the deleted line lay, by the following sequence: "^N^_" (i.e., make a newline (^N), then undo the line deletion operation [^_]). The second method is more direct. A complete deleted line (via ^\\) or partial deleted line (via ^QY) may be inserted below any other line by using ^^ (i.e., control-shift-6). B. INSERTING ESCAPE SEQUENCES INTO TEXT QEDPC has a magic key for inserting any unprintable character into the text file. While in the insert mode (i.e., not responding to a prompt), typing the escape key (<ESC>) will transform the next character between 40 hexadecimal (ASCII character "@") and 5F hexadecimal (ASCII character "_") into the corresponding control character. For example, the sequence "<ESC>L" will imbed ^L in the text, "<ESC><ESC>" imbeds "^[" (escape) in the text. Control characters in text files are displayed in highlighted or inverse video by QEDPC. The primary application of this facility is to embed sequences of control characters to manipulate printers. If the proper sequences are embedded at the beginning of the file, the printer may be initialized. Inserting ^L into the text will force a form feed on many printers, and so on. C. EDITING SEARCH STRINGS Simple editing and replaying of search strings may be performed. The last search strings is saved in a buffer; this may be displayed at the "Find?" prompt for the search or alter command by typing ^L. If the buffer is empty, typing ^L will embed ^L in the search string. For programming simplicity, <ESC> terminates the input of the search string, and, thus, cannot be directly searched for. A kludge is implemented to work around this: "^]" will be translated to "^[" in the search string. D. DEFAULT FILE EXTENSIONS The file extension of the file invoked from the command line is saved and used as a default. Subsequent requests for files need not have the extension, if the default is desired and no other file exists on the sub-directory with the same filename and a null file extension. The default file extension may be altered during an editing session by requesting a file using an explicit file extension. To denote a file with no file extension, use a dot following the filename (e.g., "foobar."). E. JUMPS Lines to jump to can be defined on the command line invoking QEDPC or during editing. ^J will invoke a prompt requesting the line. Responding with a number will move the cursor to that absolute line. If the line number is greater than the number of lines in the file, the cursor moves to the end of the file. Responding with a "+" or "-" followed by a number, will move the cursor by those number of lines below or above the current line, respectively. F. MARKING TEXT A line of text may be marked and jumped to quickly by the following trick. Type ^J, followed by <RETURN> or <ESC>. This sets the current line number to the line to jump to. Leave the line, do editing, then type ^KJ, and the cursor will move to the last defined jump line number. If lines are deleted or inserted following defining the line to jump to, then the cursor will not return to the original text. ^KJ only returns you to the last defined line number, or the end of the file if the line number does not exist. For example, ... editing ... /*now doing some editing */ ^J<RETURN> /* define jump line number to current line */ ^U /* go to top of file */ ... editing ... /* more editing here */ ^KJ /* jump back to previous line number */ VI. BUGS 1. Undo works only if the cursor remains at the same vertical position. (Use ^^ to insert deleted text.) 2. Marking text returns to the original line number, not necessarily the original text. 3. Text marking for one line only. VII. TABLE OF CONTROL CHARACTERS ^@: No edit function, lead-in character for some terminals ^A: Move cursor left one word. ^B: Move cursor to bottom of file ^C: Move cursor down one page ^D: Move cursor right one character ^E: Move cursor up one line ^F: Move cursor right one word ^G: Delete character under cursor ^H: Move cursor left one character ^I: Tab ^J: Jump. Displays more options. +/-n: jump n lines down or up respectively n: jump to line n ^K: Block moves. Displays more options: Q: Quit. Displays more options (<> indicate possibilites): <W>rite to a file. Displays more options: <E>xit to PCDOS edit <A>nother file <R>eturn to the file being edited <A>bandon the current edited file. Displays options: <E>xit to PCDOS edit <A>nother file <R>eturn to the file being edited (cancel abandon) <R>eturn to the file being edited. X: eXit to PCDOS after saving the file R: Read a file, insert at current cursor position J: Repeat jump to last "jump to" line number B: Block moves. Displays more options: <M>ove a block of text <C>opy a block of text <D>elete a block of text <W>rite a block of text to a file <P>rint a block of text <S>hift a block of text with editing keys <R>eform a block of text to have current right margin ^L: Repeat last search or alter ^M: Create new line behind cursor (cursor on new line) ^N: Create new line ahead of cursor (new line below cursor) ^O: Move cursor to left end of line ^P: Move cursor to right end of line ^Q: Quick moves. Displays more options F: Find. Displays more options: <B>ackward search, up through file n: (number) of items to skip A: Alter. Displays more options: <B>ackward search, up through file <G>lobal search from beginning of file <T>o end of file from current line <W>ithout asking for verification or showing changes <V>erbose, show changes as they are made without verification* n: (number) of replacements P: prettify current paragraph Y: Delete to end of line L: Toggle statusline ON/OFF O: Toggle Onscreen help menu ON/OFF K: Show editing context. Displays more options: <F>ile context. Delete files, change names. <A>uto indent toggle ON/OFF <B>ackup file toggle ON/OFF <T>ab length (number) <D>efault quick backup directory string* <S>trip trailing blanks toggle ON/OFF <R>ight margin is n <L>ine:column display toggle ON/OFF <H>orizontal scroll toggle whole page/current line only <E>xpert mode toggle ON/OFF <O>nscreen help toggle <V>ersion update toggle ON/OFF B: Quick backup of edited file to another directory (see above)* ^R: Move cursor up one page ^S: Move cursor left one character ^T: Delete to end of word under cursor ^U: Move cursor to top of file ^V: Move cursor to bottom of screen ^W: Scroll up, leave cursor on current line and column ^X: Move cursor down one line ^Y: Move cursor to top of screen ^Z: Scroll down, leave cursor on current line and column ^[: ESCAPE, next character is embedded control character ^\\: Delete line on which cursor resides ^]: Pseudo-escape in search strings ^^: Insert deleted line at current line ^_: Undo last edit if vertical screen position of cursor unchanged ----------------------------------------------------------------------- * This item is not in the CP/M version.