Antonio wrote:
> The online ed manual is already fixed:
>
> http://www.gnu.org/software/ed/manual/ed_manual.html#Commands
>
> Thanks again for reporting this.
>
> BTW, these typos are in the manual since ed 0.1 (1993). It is
> surprising that nobody (not even myself!) had noticed them until now.
>

The above online ed manual looks to me to be based on the man page, not
on the info page.

The ed man page, at least as far back as early 1990's ed-0.2, which I
have on my disk right now, and at least as far back as late 1970's
Version 7 Unix (man page for that ed here:
http://modman.unixdev.net/?manpath=v7man&page=ed&sektion=1) always had
that correct.

It seems to be just the info page which has this error. Since I am a
long time man page user, and almost as long a time info page avoider, I
had never previously noticed any errors in "info ed".

I am reading the "info ed" pages now for the first time. Here's what
else I notice that looks either wrong, or at least dubious, to me. (Do
beware that I usually run ed 0.2, not GNU Ed 1.10, so my comments below
may reflect my archaic expectations.)

===

1. In the "2 Introduction to line editing" section, it ways "<BACKSPACE>
   (sometimes labeled <DELETE> or <DEL>)". This is dubious in my view.
   At least on every keyboard I've typed on, backspace removed the
   -previous- character just before the cursor, while delete entered an
   ANSI escape sequence which in some screen modes removes the -next-
   character, just after the cursor. However, perhaps some users do have
   their keyboard setup to have the delete character delete the previous
   character, so perhaps this item is technically correct.

2. In the same section, the "*,w junk" example is a bit silly, as the
   default address range for the "w" command is the whole buffer ... the
   explicit comma ',' can be omitted (this is neither wrong nor dubious
   ... just me nit picking.)

3. In the same section, it says "Comments begin with a '#'." It would be
   more accurate, in my view, to have said "Commands beginning with a
   '#' are taken as comments and ignored." (Input mode lines that begin
   with '#' are just more input, otherwise it would require tricky use
   of the 's' command or some other such workaround to enter '#' comment
   lines into code.)

4. In the section "3 Invoking ed", it states of the --restricted option
   "This mode disables edition of files ...". Typo. Should be "This mode
   disables editing of files ...".

5. In the section "6 Commands", when removing spaces from the 'g' and
   'G' commands, don't forget to also remove spaces from the 'v' and 'V'
   commands. So far as I have noticed, spaces are allowed and harmless
   on other commands.

===

Perhaps some of the above will prove useful. Thanks for continuing to
keep this ancient dog alive ... it's been my "home away from home" for a
long time now.

--
Paul Jackson [email protected]
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