[comp.editors] Zone and other trivia

wb8foz@mthvax.cs.miami.edu (David Lesher) (10/06/90)

Many years ago I used to use 'Redit' on a large dual 370 that
ran TSS. Since only 6 or 7 places in the world ran 370-TSS, I doubt
that anyone else has used it....

But it DID have several unusual features that every_so_often, I
sort of wish I still had. Has anyone else seen these?

	Zone:
	you could set the zone variable to be columns n1-n2 and
	search / replacement commands worked ONLY on those
	-- things elsewhere were ignored

	Hex
	You could turn on hex mode, and all input and output was then
	in hex, until you exited that mode, when it displayed it in (of
	course!) EBCDucky. This made it handy to locate that weird non
	printing character, such as the null that would silently kill
	the runoff program.  (Alas, it would NOT number the lines in
	hex, (only decimal) which I needed one day while writing PROM
	code, as 64,000 lines of db'_' statements)

Beside that, since the machine had 100 million words of 32 bit
memory, it didn't complain TOO much about the large file.

What unusual features have you seen in editors past that you grew to
love and now miss?
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