🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov17.145011.24541@Princeton.EDU> bvaughan@sheps.Princeton.EDU (Barbara Vaughan) writes:
>In article <1992Nov16.221338.42264@datamark.co.nz> david@datamark.co.nz (David Rowland) writes:
>>
>>I agree. I though vi was used for editing programs and text files.  If
>>any one is looking for something which allows selecting rectangle
>>blocks and columns, shouldn't they be using a word processor or a
>>spread sheet???  
>>
>
>Back in the days when I mostly worked with MSDOS and had a good editor
>that handled rectangular blocks easily, I used to use it to prepare data
>so I COULD read it into a spreadsheet or word processor.  For instance, if
>I have a file  of formatted data:
>
>123456789
>987654321
>
>I can use my editor to insert a column of blanks in front of each field so
>it can be read into a spreadsheet program:
>
>12 34 56 78 9
>98 76 54 32 1
>

A simple QBasic program will do this job nicely now-a-days.

>Or if I have some ugly SPSS CROSSTAB output, where cells are separated by
>dashes, plus signs and vertical bars:
>
>   1 | 23 |
>-----+----+
>     |    |
>   3 | 45 +
>-----+----+
>
>I can get rid of those  vertical bar columns in a jiffy with a good
>editor, so that I can do the rest of the job of making a nice document in
>WordPerfect. 
>

Wouldn't a simple replace "|" with "" do the job???


>I also found this feature useful when writing programs.  Let's say I have
>a section of code I decide to make conditional, so I want to indent it to
>make an "if.. then.." block.  I just insert a column of blanks in front of
>that section of code.
>

Are you saying you don't format the code as you write it???  Most
editors come with automatic indentation anyway.

>There are other ways of doing all these things, but if you've ever used an
>editor that handles column blocks easily and quickly, believe me, you'll
>find lots of uses for the feature.  Kedit recognized column blocks, line
>blocks and "sentence blocks", and once blocked, you could copy, move,
>delete, or fill with a character.
>
>Barbara Vaughan

The main point of the argument is that when you are editing a program
or data files, you require the block movement of entire lines.  As for
formatting code, I find the best time to do this is as the code is
being entered.  If more code is added that makes the code unreadable
where indentation is concerned, there are a lot of code formatting
programs around to do this.

Cheers.
-- 
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