About the Previous Edition

In the fifth edition of this book, the ex editor commands were first discussed more fully. In Chapter 5, Chapter 6, and Chapter 7, the complex features of ex and vi were clarified by adding more examples, in topics such as regular expression syntax, global replacement, .exrc files, word abbreviations, keyboard maps, and editing scripts. A few of the examples were drawn from articles in UNIX World magazine. Walter Zintz wrote a two-part tutorial[1] on vi that taught us a few things we didn't know, and that also had a lot of clever examples illustrating features we did already cover in the book. Ray Swartz also had a helpful tip in one of his columns.[2] We are grateful for the ideas in these articles.

[1] "vi Tips for Power Users," UNIX World, April 1990; and "Using vi to Automate Complex Edits," UNIX World, May 1990. Both articles by Walter Zintz.

[2] "Answers to UNIX," UNIX World, August 1990.