🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov17.005252@gruc19.nor.chevron.com> hjiwa@gruc19.nor.chevron.com (Jeff Wang) writes:
>bvaughan@sheps.Princeton.EDU (Barbara Vaughan) writes:
>|> 
>|> 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
>
>You could use :%s\(..\)\(..\)\(..\)\(..\)\(.\)/\1 \2 \3 \4 \5/
>to do that.
>
This thread has come full circle.  Here is my summary so far:
A. says "vi can't handle rectangular blocks"
B. says "yes it can; here is the arcane code to do what you want to do."
C. says "That's so arcane; a good editor would do it much more transparently"
D. says "Well, if you really want to do stuff like that, use a spreadsheet
         or word processor; vi is an editor"
E. I post three examples of tasks that are not suited to a spreadsheet or
         wordprocessor but where easy handling of rectangular blocks would
         be useful.  I didn't say vi couldn't do these things.  I just
         wanted to illustrate that these are not tasks that are suited for
         spreadsheets or word processors.     
F., G., H., ... all post some arcane vi code or suggest using Basic (!!!) to
         perform these tasks.

Actually, in the example above, I would probably use sed to insert the
blanks.  I also use awk for some of the tasks I used to use an editor
for (when I was a DOS person). Of all the editors I've used in my life, vi
is neither the best nor the worst.

Barbara Vaughan