led an easy to use, full-featured multi-platform line editor with a consistant UI written in ansi c.
I use many different computer systems, and while they all have some sort of line editor (I don't always use addressable cursor tty's) I got tired of remembering arcane commands written 50+ years ago. Think DEC's teco. So I wrote LED.
LED has a full-featured set of commands and since it's ansi c it can be easily ported to all the machines I use (or am likely to use).
To build led: cc -o led led.c -Wall -ansi Place led in your /usr/local/bin or wherever your executables reside. There is a man page (led.1). Place this file in your /usr/local/man/man1 directory or where you keep your local man pages.
Update (10/2021): I added a much cleaner version that is c99 compliant. It is called led_v3.c Compile with: c99 via: gcc -o led led_v3.c -std=gnu99 -O2 -march=native -Wall -pedantic Note that this is not ansi c code, so won't compile cleanly on strict ansi machines.
LED has enough commands to write meaningful documents/programs/whatever but not so many that they get in the way. A lot of led was written with led.
When LED is started, you will be placed in APPEND mode. Everything you type will be added to the buffer.
If LED is started with an optional filename then the file (if found) will be loaded into the buffer and, again, you will be placed in APPEND mode.
Commands are in the form of a period followed by a single letter. ie .l, .q and need to be the at the start of an empty line.
Please see the man page for more up-to-date and detailed information.
Commands for LED are as follows:
.q Exit immediately, do not save the buffer
.e Exit with a prompt for a filename to save to
.s [filename] Save the buffer to filename. If no filename is given you will be prompted for one.
.l [startline] [endline] print the buffer to the display/tty startline and endline are optional. If used, will display only between startline and endline inclusve. If just the startline is used, print will display starting at line# startline. While printing, the display will stop at 24 lines and prompt you for more output. You will see the ---MORE--- line. Either press enter/return to print another 24 lines or press 'q' and the enter/return to stop the listing.
.d [linenumber] delete line linenumber
.i [linenumber] start inserting text BEFORE linenumber. To exit insert mode, press .q and enter/return at the start of an empty line.
.x [line number] cut the line linenumber, saving the cut text in a buffer
.c [linenumber] copy the line linenumber to a buffer
.p [linenumber] paste the cut buffer BEFORE linenumber
.f [string] search for 'string' in the text buffer. Shows the line number and line of text.
.r [linenumber] [old string] [new string] replace a single whitespace bounded string named 'old string' with 'new string' 'Old string' may be a part of a larger string, but is terminated by either a space or a newline.
.ra [linenumber] [old string] [new string] Same as replace, but performs the operation globally starting at linenumber.
.undo Undo un-does whatever horrible thing you just did to your buffer. There is only one level of undo.
.os Drop to a command prompt (/bin/sh on *nix systems). This is set by a #define in the beginning of the source file.
There are two prompts: append mode: > insert mode: insert>
Normally you will see the '>' prompt. Everything you type here except commands gets appended to the end of the text buffer.
When inserting text before a line you will see 'insert>'. The normal commands do not work in insert mode. The only special command that does work is the '.q' command that exits the insert mode and goes back to the append mode.
See the man page (led.1) for any more information.
The buffer size is limited only by available memory and your operating system.
This code is under the MIT software license as described in the Github repository where this resides. You are free to share it, use it and modify it to your needs. There are no guarantees as to it's usefullnes and function.
-- Kurt
