35.1 And Why Not?

There are many specialized forms of editing that happen frequently enough that they sometimes want to be saved into a script. Examples of this kind of thing include:

• fmt ( 35.2 ) and related scripts ( 35.3 ) for reformatting jagged lines into neat paragraphs.

• recomment ( 35.4 ) , a script for reformatting comment blocks within programs and scripts.

• behead ( 35.5 ) , a script for removing the headers from mail and news messages.

• center ( 35.8 ) , a script for centering lines of text in a file.

In addition, there are a number of programs that provide some useful ways of modifying files but that you don't normally think of as editors:

• split ( 35.9 ) and csplit ( 35.10 ) let you split a big file into smaller pieces.

• tr ( 35.11 ) lets you substitute one character for another - including non-printing characters that you specify by their octal values.

• dd ( 35.6 , 35.12 , 35.13 ) lets you perform various data conversions on a file.

• cut ( 35.14 ) and colrm ( 35.15 ) let you cut columns or fields out of a file, and paste ( 35.18 ) lets you put them back, perhaps in a different order.

This chapter covers all that and more.