Re: [Bug-ed] GNU ed 1.11-rc1 released

[Andrew L. Moore]

On Feb 8, 2015, at 6:40 PM, Martin Guy <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> On 08/02/2015, Andrew L. Moore <address@hidden> wrote:
>> Antonio Diaz Diaz wrote:
>>> * The "z" command has been fixed. ("zN" printed N + 1 lines). This bug was
>>> present since at least ed-0.2.
>> 
>> This bug exists in the *BSD ed’s as well, unfortunately.
>> 
>> Though documented otherwise in the ed man page (ed.1), the intent of the
>> command `zN’ is to set the window size to N
> 
> I think we may mean different things by the word "window" which in
> 1974 could not refer to little boxes on bitmapped screens (as there
> weren't any!). I remember the "window" being the height of the
> letterbox through which we peered at our source files on text-only
> glass teletypes, so "z" let you change the height of that letterbox.
> 
> I don't have the source of the original Berkeley ed any more, but the
> original ex, which extends ed, behaves in the same way as the
> newly-corrected GNU ed, i.e. z10 prints 10 lines. And the "10" is not
> persistent to following "z"’s.

Historical yes. It’s the unqualified `z’ command (not `zN’) behavior - leaving 
the previous command at the top of the screen - that I'm not crazy about.
-AM

> Hope this helps.
> 
>   M.