Editor to show FF/CR/LF?

[Martin Slimmer]

It's been a long time since I've had to do this, but I remember there being an editor I can use which would show special characters in a file -- such as FF/CR/LF, etc. However, I can't remember if it was EVE, LSE, EDT, TPU/EDIT, etc.

Can someone help me out?

The view would be something like:

The first lineFF
The Second lineFF
etc.

[Steven Schweda]

Try "EDIT /TPU"?

[Martin Slimmer]

No good with edit/tpu. I can edit the file that way, but all I see then is

The first line
The Second line
etc.

[Camiel Vanderhoeven]

The TPU guide has an example procedure that does just this. It can be found at http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/73final/6018/6018pro_014.html.

[Martin Slimmer]

I'm really looking for something editor-related. I know I used to use this, just can't dust off the cobwebs enough to remember.

[Martin Slimmer]

I think I've figured out a way around this -- I'm changing my REFLECTIONS setting to Display the control characters instead of interpret them.

[John Gillings]

Martin,

> REFLECTIONS setting to Display the
> control characters instead of interpret them.

TPU will display any control characters contained in the file as DATA using a glyph of some type (exact details of which depend on your terminal or terminal emulator). TPU does not display any META data (ie: control characters representing the end of records).

When you enable "display control characters", what you see does not necessarily reflect the real contents of the file, instead it shows what the terminal driver has sent to format the file on your screen.

For example, an RMS variable length file does not contain LF or CR charaters at the end of each line. Instead it contains a record length followed by the data. When you display the file on a screen, RMS and the terminal driver add CR and LF characters to format the lines. You will see those characters on your terminal, even though they don't exist in the file. Similarly, a STREAM_LF file contains a single LF character at the end of each record. RMS and the terminal driver change that into CR/LF to display the file.

If you want to see what characters are really in the file, use DUMP.

[Hoff]

Other answers here have done an admirable job with the direct question; that this is your terminal or terminal emulator that's centrally involved with the display. (OpenVMS lobs bytes at the display, and has no idea what glyph lights up.)

In that regard, I just ran a quick test with the default Mac OS X terminal emulator with an ssh session over into an OpenVMS Alpha box, launched LSEDIT, and the ^V^M displays the expected tiny CR glyph back at the terminal.

As for the background on why you might be looking for these control character displays, if this is a DCL command procedure or other such that's centrally involved, it's been my experience that directly embedding these characters is problematic for various reasons.

I've posted up various examples of embedding escape and control and such within procedures, if that's where you're headed here.

I've seen this sort of question arise with file transfers and incorrect settings, too. Or with tossing stuff at printers.

So what's up?

[Jan van den Ende]

Martin,

In the old EDT any "named", control characters are displayed as etc, as long as they sre not the control characters that constitute the formatting according to the file type (eg, CR and/or LF in stream files).

$ editt /edt FILENAME will get you there.
... but all EDT restrictions now come into play as well, eg max 255 chars/line.

I still use it every once in a while when I need to manipulate control chars (or any non-printable ASCII values), eg in print setup modules.

hth.

Proost.

Have one on me.

jpe

[kari salminen]

The real VTxxx terminals have the menu option "Show Control Characters".

Show control characters allows you to select a normal display or a display called Control
Representation mode or CRM. This "monitor and show all" display includes graphic representation of control characters.

[Willem Grooters]

Some terminal emulators have the same ability to show 'non-printable' characters in stead of interpreting them. be aware that it's either one or the other: will be shown as such and not cause a carriage-return and linefeed - the next character will be shown immediately after that.

My experience is that edit/tpu does show some of these these characters, some 'translated', others as reversed quetsion marks - if these are not record terminators - these will not be shown in most editors.

[Martin Slimmer]

Closing thread. Thanks everyone!

[Hein van den Heuvel]

I know the thread is closed, problem solved, but an other good way to 'see' the control characters is to use:

$ SEARCH /FORM=DUMP [ /NUMB ] ...


Also, Willem, I suspect that teh reverse question marks you refer to come from the terminal, not the editor.

Cheers,
Hein.