HP NonStop G-Series - Manual (Page 90)

Introduction to Ranges
EDIT Command Summary
058061 Tandem Computers Incorporated 4–11
Introduction to Ranges When you type a command, you ask EDIT to “operate” on one or more
lines of text in your file. So, typing a command actually involves typing
both a command name and a range of text. A range is the line or lines of
text on which you want the command to operate.
One of the most powerful features of EDIT is the variety of ways in which it
allows you to specify ranges of lines or columns in your text. The simplest
ways to indicate line ranges are with a line number (for a single line) or two
line numbers separated by a slash (for two or more consecutive lines). You
can also specify a range of lines that contains a particular character string (a
character string is a series of characters such as a word, a phrase, or a
number enclosed in quotation marks). The way to specify a column range is
by indicating a single column or two column numbers separated by a colon
(for two or more columns in the same line).
If you don’t specify a range when you type a command that optionally
takes one, EDIT assumes that you want to operate on the current line (that
is, the last line displayed). The exception to this general rule concerns the
ADD command: When you use an ADD command with no range, EDIT
simply gives you the next available line. Table 1 summarizes the most
common ways of indicating ranges. For a complete description of ranges,
refer to Section 5.