Which editor to use?


 
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# 1  
Old 11-27-2007
Which editor to use?

Good day, everyone!
I've started using/learning UNIX recently and the only problem i get, is that I can hardly edit a file from within the script (searching/replacing, extracting, ect.) I've tried vi, ex, ed all of them did only half of job, which means they opened out a file but did not perform any editing or any required operations. Hence, I've got a question:
which editor do i need to use, to be able to perform an editing of a file from the script?

Thank you very much for any suggestions and what's more important explanations
Smilie
# 2  
Old 11-27-2007
ex/sed/awk are your friends
# 3  
Old 11-27-2007
What type of problem you have encountered with 'vi' ?
# 4  
Old 11-27-2007
Quote:
Originally Posted by bhargav
What type of problem you have encountered with 'vi' ?
The main problem i'm having with vi is, that i understand how to open a file on specific line, the thing I don't get is how to save the changes. For example, I've been trying to do something like this.
Code:
vi +5n myfile
:i 
"Insert some text"
:w
:q

As I said, it only opened editor in Insert mode.
It's probably silly me Smilie
I've tried to use sed, and it helped, although that was the code I've found on Internet, but I don't understand completely the meaning of criterias yet.
p.s. I've managed to solve the given example using temp file, which is being an absolutely time and space consuming solution....
# 5  
Old 11-28-2007
You can simply do whatever you want with test in ed/sed/awk etc.
Notice that, you can edit content of file during reading it and forward output from it to other file and after that simple overwrite it e.g. in awk:
Code:
awk 'some_code' some_file > new_file; mv new_file some_file

Or use ed like it:
Code:
ed file <<-ENDIT
g/nrumber_of_line/a/some_new_text/
w
q
ENDIT

depends from your expectations.
# 6  
Old 11-29-2007
Thank you very much. That's helped a lot!
Smilie
 
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