Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!bu-cs!purdue!mentor.cc.purdue.edu!j.cc.purdue.edu!mab
From: mab@j.cc.purdue.edu (Mike Brown)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: Binary Editor Wanted
Message-ID: <9027@j.cc.purdue.edu>
Date: 27 Feb 89 17:41:11 GMT
References: <17886@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>
Reply-To: mab@j.cc.purdue.edu (Mike Brown)
Organization: Purdue University
Lines: 39

I've corresponded via private email with the original poster of this
query, and I believe he's adopted my solution.  But, since there seems
to be a lot of ongoing discussion on this, and since I've not seen
anyone else take this approach, I thought I'd share my solution with
the net at large.

Some time ago, a program called "bed" was posted in comp.sources.unix.
I use bed on a Unix system, but I think it would be a trivial task to
port it to other systems.  The next time I need an MS-DOS binary
editor, I'll probably do just that.

Bed is not an editor, but is rather a front-end to your favorite text
editor that you already know and love.  It reads the file to be edited
and converts it, per your specs, to a readable text temp file.  You
then edit the temp file with your customary text editor, and when
you're done, bed converts the file back to its binary form.  This gives
you all the flexibility, power, and familiarity of the editor you
normally use, and lets you edit any type of file.

There are at least half a dozen comp.sources.unix archive sites
scattered over the country that provide ftp and/or uucp access to the
archives.  One of them is our own j.cc.purdue.edu system; there may be
others closer to you.

Here's a capsule summary of how to access our comp.sources.unix
archives.  I'll assume you're familiar with ftp; if not, you can
probably find a local guru at your shop who is.
    $ ftp j.cc.purdue.edu
	(login as "anonymous")
    ftp> cd comp.sources.unix
    ftp> get README 

The README file describes the file formats of the archives and includes
an index of what's there.  Most things you'll need to transfer to your
system in binary mode and uncompress.
-- 
Mike Brown, Systems Programmer		ARPANET (best): mab@j.cc.purdue.edu
Purdue University Computing Center	BITNET: xmab@purccvm
West Lafayette, IN 47907		PHONE: 317/494-1787