Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!apple!bionet!agate!violet.berkeley.edu!steve
From: steve@violet.berkeley.edu (Steve Goldfield)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Aztec C/Shell DOES HAVE a 'vi' editor
Message-ID: <15487@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 14 Oct 88 18:20:15 GMT
References: <1988Oct10.145745.2790@mntgfx.mentor.com> <967@oswego.Oswego.EDU> <5606@hoptoad.uucp> <10402@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> <15424@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <10421@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU>
Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 34

In article <10421@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> earleh@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Earle R. Horton) writes:
#>In article <15424@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> steve@violet.berkeley.edu 
#>	(Steve Goldfield) writes:
#>>What Mac Editor has the complex search/replace patterns
#>>available in vi (by far its best feature)? If there is
#>>one, I'm ready for it. Right now I upload to UNIX if
#>>I want to do significant automatic editing of a file.
#>
#>MPW Shell has this stuff.  The main drawback is that many of the
#>regular expression characters have been replaced by Macintosh extended
#>character set "option" characters.  I suppose this was done to be
#>different, or to give the impression that this is a new innovation,
#>invented by the people who programmed MPW Shell.  You get used to it
#>after a while, however.
#>
#>MPW Shell can be used to do "significant automatic editing of a file"
#>and is perhaps as good as vi/ex in this regard.
#>
#>Earle R. Horton. 23 Fletcher Circle, Hanover, NH 03755
#>(603) 643-4109
#>Sorry, no fancy stuff, since this program limits my .signature to three

Thanks for the response and also to the person who sent me similar
Email. What I meant by "automatic editing" is that in UNIX I can
write a shell script to use ex for complex changes to many files.
Can MPW Shell do that, too? I'll look into it in any case. The
other thing which seems to be lacking (maybe I just haven't run
into the right software) is a good and very general spelling
checker (by good I mean that it shows the context, permits a
typed in substitution, permits adding a new word to a dictionary,
and checks files from all word processing programs without
problems. I've used SpellsWell and the built-in checkers in
Microsoft Word 3 and WriteNow and haven't been impressed. But
then UNIX spell isn't too hot, either.)