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From: mwm@eris.BERKELEY.EDU (Mike (My watch has windows) Meyer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: AmigaDOS script hacking: flames
Message-ID: <4560@jade.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Mon, 3-Aug-87 04:40:39 EDT
Article-I.D.: jade.4560
Posted: Mon Aug  3 04:40:39 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 4-Aug-87 01:36:08 EDT
References: <1251@spice.cs.cmu.edu>
Sender: usenet@jade.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: mwm@eris.BERKELEY.EDU (Mike (My watch has windows) Meyer)
Organization: Missionaria Phonibalonica
Lines: 73

In article <1251@spice.cs.cmu.edu> mjp@spice.cs.cmu.edu (Michael Portuesi) writes:
<doesn't matter.  My goal was to create a self-contained CLI script
<that could do its work without external files or programs that I had
<written.

That constraint makes things *much* harder! I use edit scripts with
great abandon.

<All I wanted to depend on was the stuff that came with the
<Workbench disk. (Remember, this was half experiment, half practical
<idea).  Is there a way to make EDIT create a multi-line edit script
<without using an external file?  Could you illustrate?

Hmm. Not sure it can be done. But your original need (wanting a ">>")
can be done with temp files. To wit:

	echo >ram:temp1 hello
	echo >ram:temp2 there
	join ram:temp1 ram:temp2 as output-file

<BTW, "intending" a command to be used for a specific purpose merely
<cuts down on the utility of the system as a whole, as it limits the
<way individual pieces can be combined.

True. I'm always pleased when I find people using the tools I created
in ways I never intended them to be used.


<Okay, the ability to loop a sequence of instructions is a big win in
<EDIT.  But a few things I could wish for are:
<
<	* Some sort of temporary storage, analogous to the TECO
<	  Q-register, that can be used to hold text or other
<	  information

Here we are, playing with popguns (ed, sed, edit) and he pulls out a
tac nuke (teco) :-). Why don't you just do your stream editing with
GNU emacs? After all, it's got all of these things, and more.... :-)

<	* The ability to use text extracted from the current line as
<	  a parameter for a subsequent command.  Temporary storage can
<	  be simulated using temporary files (thank GOD for ramdisks),
<	  but there is no way to emulate this feature with EDIT (well,
<	  maybe there is, but it's complicated enough to be not worth
<	  the trouble)

I didn't have any troubles simulating (part of) this with ramdisks.
The trick is to run edit over the file multiple times - the first time
you create an edit script to be used for the second time. I didn't do
this exactly, but did similar things (edit one file into an edit
command file for a second file).

For some *really* spiffy script capabilities, find the article
describing ksh-i. It turns parenthesized command strings in the
argument list into a file name, after mapping the output from that
string into a pipe fd. So things like:

	Gen-strings > /tmp/my-strings
	awk <more-strings> | fgrep -f /tmp/my-strings

Get turned into:

	fgrep -f (Gen-strings) (awk <more-strings)

And more uses will turn up as time goes on, I'm sure....

	<mike

--
Must have walked those streets for hours,		Mike Meyer
In the dark and in the cold,				mwm@berkeley.edu
Before I really could accept,				ucbvax!mwm
There's no place called hope road.			mwm@ucbjade.BITNET