EDT Editor - Deletion of characters in a line

[Martin Bridgeman]

I have a COBOL program listing and no source. the retrieve the source file, I need to delete the first 9 characters. I used to know how to do this (ahem many years ago), and I would prefer to try using EDT rather than going through each line of 1600 to delete them manually.

Help!

[Jan van den Ende]

Martin,

if you accept going to TPU, you can :


^L (for LEARN)

(7 times)
^R (for Remember)
(Prompt: Key to remember)
(your favarite Control-key)


repeat 1600 (or a few less)
(Prompt: Press key to repeat)

(your favorite control ley)


hth,

Proost.

Have one on me.

jpe

[Dale A. Marcy]

Edit your file with EDT and enter the screen mode. Press K. Press the key that you want to define. Enter the following for the definition:

(9(D+C)L).

Press the enter key on the keypad. You can also add the D+C by typing the keypad comma and the L by typing keypad zero. The 9 is the number of times you want what is in the parenthesis repeated. The D+C deletes the current character on the line. The L moves you to the beginning of the next line. The outer paranthesis are so you can use the repeat function on your defined key. The period at the end tells EDT to execute the statements immediately upon pressing the key. When you are comfortable that this will work, you can press the Gold key and type the number of times you want the sequence to repeat and then press your defined key. Hope this helps.

[comarow]

If that seems complicated,
edit/tpu file
hit the do key
type erase line
do that 9 times.

The other solutions are more elegant.

[Hein van den Heuvel]

Are there not also page breaks and symbol tables to deal with? I would consider a little perl or gawk loop. If you attach a bit of a sample listing (with actual source obscured if you like) then I'm sure a reader can give you a one or two liner for this.

Cheers,
Hein.

[Robert Gezelter]

Martin,

I would concur with Hein's concerns. Albeit my preference would probably be DCL or a TECO macro.

There is a great danger in generating garbage by presuming that if there is a line, it MUST contain at least the expected number of characters.

A little code upfront will save a lot of pain later.

- Bob Gezelter, http://www.rlgsc.com

[Hein van den Heuvel]

In the mean time I found a cool listing.
Here is a simple perl commmand to solve your problem:

perl -ne "print $' if /\s+\d+\s/" x.lis > x.cob

-n = implied loop through input file
-e = perl script follows as text string

$' = everything to the right of the last match

\s+ = some whitespace (tab + spaces)
\d+ = some decimal numbers
\s = one more space

So this prints the remainder of those lines that start wih some spaces, a number and one more space.
This triggers on real source lines, but not on pagebreak data nor symbol table output and the likes.

hth,
Hein.

[John Gillings]

Please don't use the EDT editor.

EDT was made obselete by the introduction of TPU and EVE back in VMS V4 circa 1984. EDT has some serious limitations, and even a few outright bugs which will never be fixed. If you really can't teach yourself to use the EVE keypad (which is actually very simple... all the keys on a standard VT keypad do exactly what the label says!) then use EVE with the EDT kaypad.

Problems like this one are easily and intuitively solved using LEARN and REPEAT as described by Jan.

If we didn't have such a fanatical insistence on upwards compatibility, EDT would have long since been removed from the operating system Hey, we removed the dreaded SOS editor back in about V3, so I don't really see why we can't get rid of EDT more than 20 years after it was superceeded by MUCH better technology! If I had my way, the EDT image would issue a message:

"%DCL-I-JOIN_THE_21ST_CENTURY, use DEFINE EVE$KEYPAD EDT and EDIT/TPU or just learn to use EVE"

[Robert_Boyd]

John,

There is one situation where I think the TPU based editors fail. That's when you're logged in on a console where the VT support is not available or not properly configured to use it and you have to make changes to a startup procedure or control file.

Is there any way to use TPU/EVE in line mode in that scenario?

All I've ever been able to figure out in that situation is EDT.

Or is there a "standard" workaround for getting any console into a working VT setup after a minimum boot, or even a manual startup boot (set /startup=OPA0:)

Robert

[comarow]

I wish I remember how to use the line mode
in EDT, or if someone simply has a summary of simple commands,
so when a console isn't working you can fix
startup files.