tutes-dump/site-tutorials/survival-teco-2.0.html

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<h1>Survival TECO</h1>
<h6>Version 2.0</h6>
<p>You can perform useful editing with TECO, the venerable,
line-noise-for-command-language  Editor that Time
Forgot, knowing just 3 rules and 16 commands.</p>
<h2>Rules</h2>
<ol>
<li>Pressing the Escape key (shown as <strong>$</strong> below
&mdash; <strong>not</strong> a dollar sign) twice
executes typed commands instead of the Enter key. (A single 
<strong>$</strong> terminates string arguments for some commands.)</li>
<li>Commands don't have to be executed one-at-a-time. You can type a
long series of commands then "<strong>$&nbsp;$</strong>" and TECO will
execute the commands in order.</li>
<li>TECO is character-oriented, so it remembers the character
position of your current location in the file, called 
"<strong>pointer</strong>". Most commands display or change the file's
contents at pointer, or move pointer to another location in the file.</li>
</ol>
<h2>Commands</h2>
<table>
<tr>
<td>1.</td><td><samp>ER<em>file</em><strong>$</strong>Y</samp><a href="#n1"><sup>1</sup></a></td><td>Open <em>file</em> for input</td>
<td>9.</td><td><samp>J</samp></td><td>Jump to beginning of file</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>2.</td><td><samp>EW<em>file</em><strong>$</strong></samp><a href="#n1"><sup>1</sup></a></td><td>Open <em>file</em> for output</td>
<td>10.</td><td><samp>ZJ</samp></td><td>Jump to end of file</td>
</tr>
<tr><td>3.</td><td><samp>EX</samp></td><td>Save and exit</td>
<td>11.</td><td><samp>T</samp><a href="#n3"><sup>3</sup></a></td><td>Type from pointer to end of line</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>4.</td><td><samp><strong>^C ^C</strong></samp></td><td>Exit (no save)</td>
<td>12.</td><td><samp>V</samp></td><td>Type current line</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>5.</td><td><samp>C</samp><a href="#n2"><sup>2</sup></a></td><td>Move character forward</td>
<td>13.</td><td><samp>D</samp><a href="#n2"><sup>2</sup></a></td><td>Delete character at pointer</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>6.</td><td><samp>R</samp><a href="#n2"><sup>2</sup></a></td><td>Move character backward</td>
<td>14.</td><td><samp>K</samp><a href="#n3"><sup>3</sup></a></td><td>Delete current line</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>7.</td><td><samp>L</samp><a href="#n3"><sup>3</sup></a></td><td>Move to beginning of next line</td>
<td>15.</td><td><samp>S<em>text</em><strong>$</strong></samp></td><td>Search for <em>text</em></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>8.</td><td><samp>I<em>text</em><strong>$</strong></samp></td><td>Insert <em>text</em></td>
<td>16.</td><td><samp>FS<em>text1</em><strong>$</strong><em>text2</em><strong>$</strong></samp></td><td>Substitute <em>text2</em> for <em>text1</em></td>
</tr>
</table>
<table>
<tr><td style="vertical-align: top"><a id="n1"><sup>1</sup></a></td><td>Some versions of TECO accept a file
name as a command line argument, making 1. and 2. unnecessary. Some
versions of TECO have a command <samp>EB<em>file</em><strong>$</strong>Y</samp> that does the same as 1. and 2. in one
step.</td></tr>
<tr><td style="vertical-align: top"><a id="n2"><sup>2</sup></a></td><td>Numeric prefix: move/delete multiple characters (negative reverses direction)</td></tr>
<tr><td style="vertical-align: top"><a id="n3"><sup>3</sup></a></td><td>Numeric prefix: move/type/delete multiple lines (negative reverses direction); (T, K only) prefix <strong>H</strong>: type/delete whole file</td></tr>
</table>
<h2>TECO on SDF</h2>
<dl>
<dt>SDF cluster</der<dt><dd><samp>TE</samp> is a port of the Ultrix version of TECO. It is actually a visual editor that displays file contents around pointer after commansds are submitted, so you won't need to use type/display commands as much (TE automatic display sometimes gets a little wonky, so you 
occassionally need a T or a V as a last resort). TE takses a file name as
a command line argument, so you don't need ER/EW/EB commands..</dd>
<dt>TWENEX</dt><dd><samp>TECO</samp> on the TOPS-20 system at twenex.org is one of the original implementations of the editor. No command line arguments, so
read and write your file with commands ER and EW. And no wimpy visual stuff,
so enter your own display commands if you can't remember where you left
pointer.</dd>
</tddl>
<p>Using TECO seems unnatural at first, but with a little effort
invested in learning the basic commands above, it's quite useful and 
fun! Perhaps the ultimate retro editor.</p>
<hr />
<p>The previous version of this tutorial is available
<a href="/?tutorials//survival-teco">here</a>.</p>
<p><em>"You can hack anything you want with TECO ..."</em></p>

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