1.10 A First Look at Using a Text Editor

You have seen that you can use the CREATE command to create a short file of text. You cannot use CREATE to edit or add to the text, however. In general, when you are writing a text file or you want to edit text in a file, you use a text editor. Text editors are programs that provide specific commands and procedures for editing, manipulating, and moving around the text within a new or existing file. OpenVMS provides several text editors, among them EVE and EDT. Chapters 3 and 4 discuss EVE and EDT in detail. This section provides a brief introduction to working with a text editor, focusing on EVE.

The EDIT command with the editor's qualifier is used to access a text editor. The syntax for the EDIT command that accesses EVE is

<b class="bold">edit/tpu</b> <span class="emphasis"><ifilespec</i></span>

The file specification can be for a new or existing file. For example, to begin using the EVE editor to change the contents of the existing file AI.TXT, you would type

$ <b class="bold">edit/tpu ai.txt</b>

EVE displays the following results:

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves      Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:All mimsy were the borogoves,      And the mome raths outgrabe."Beware the Jabberwock, my son!      The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun     The frumious Bandersnatch!"He took...