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From: graf21@unibi.uni-bielefeld.de (0152)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Can sh or csh do this VMS DCL trick??
Message-ID: <1991May02.175533.462@unibi.uni-bielefeld.de>
Date: 2 May 91 17:55:33 GMT
Article-I.D.: unibi.1991May02.175533.462
References: <DAVIS.91Apr27183503@pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu> <1991Apr28.003414.26784@convex.com>
Sender: Sebastian Lisken <lisken@lili11.uni-bielefeld.de>
Distribution: comp
Organization: Universitaet Bielefeld
Lines: 33

In article <1991Apr28.003414.26784@convex.com> tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen) writes:
>
>Sounds like you want the ``here-is'' notation:
>
>    cat >post_news.txt <<EOD
>	blah blah 
>	... etc ..
>    EOD
>

My favourite way of using "here-documents" is
to to pipe the "document" into the desired command through an
intermediate "sed", like this:

sed 's/^\.//' | your-command -options args <<EOD
.
.This is the input to "your-command", starting with a blank line
.and ending with another one
.
EOD
next-command ...

Some "shar"-archivers (not all, unfortunately) use this trick. By
specifying different patterns you could even introduce line-numbering,
comments, indentation etc. into a "here-document". (sh ignores indentation
when EOD is preceded by a minus sign, anyway.) Apart from improving
readability, there can't possibly be confusion between the "EOD" line
ending the input and a similar line inside it. The pattern after
"sed 's/" must be designed carefully and "anchored" via "^" to make
sure that "sed" delete no more characters from the input than intended.

Sebastian Lisken
Bielefeld University, Germany