UNIX° TEXT PROCESSING

Putting It All Together

Before returning to the topic of table of contents and index processing, using shell tools that we will build, let’s review what we’ve covered so far.

We started with a promise to show you how the UNIX environment could support and enhance the writing process. To do that, we’ve had to delve into many details and may have lost the big picture.

Let’s return to that big picture here. First, UNIX provides what any computer with even rudimentary word-processing capabilities provides: the ability to save and edit text. Few of us write it perfectly the first time, so the ability to rewrite the parts of a document we don’t like without retyping the parts we want to keep is a major step forward.

However, no one will argue that UNIX offers better tools at this simple level than those available in other environments. The vi editor is a good editor, but it is not the easiest to learn and lacks many standard word-processing capabilities.

Where UNIX’s editing tools excel is in performing complex or repetitive edits. A beginner may have little use for pattern matching, but an advanced user cannot do without it. Few, if any, microcomputer-based or standalone word processors can boast the sophisticated capabilities for global changes that UNIX provides in even its most primitive editors.

When you go beyond vi, and begin to use programs such as ex, sed, and awk, you have ...