NE(1)

NAME
NE - a text editor

SYNOPSIS
ne [options] [source file(s)]

DESCRIPTION

NE is a text editor that was originally designed in the early 1990s to run on a wide variety of machines, from large servers to personal workstations. In the past it ran on a number of operating systems, but the current version supports only Unix-like systems. The main use of NE is expected to be as an interactive screen editor. However, it can also function as a line-by-line editor, and it is programmable, so it can be run non-interactively as a text manipulation tool. NE is a re-implementation of a previous editor that was called E, which in turn evolved from one called Zed and a number of predecessors that ran on IBM mainframes. The lineage can be traced back to some very early Cambridge text editors of the 1960s that ran on Titan (a prototype Atlas 2) and earlier on EDSAC 2.

OPTIONS

-binary -b
    Run in binary mode.

-from <files>
    The option name -from can be omitted. Up to 50 file names are permitted. A single hyphen indicates the standard input.

--help -help -h
    Show a list of options and then exit.

-line
    Run in line-by-line mode.

-noinit
    Do not obey the caller's .nerc file.

-notabs
    Do not treat tabs specially. (See other tab options below.)

-notraps
    Disable crash traps (for debugging).

-opt <string>
    Supply an initial line of editing commands.

-readonly -r
    Start in readonly mode.

-tabin
    Expand tabs in input lines, do not retab on output.

-tabout
    Use tabs in all output lines.

-tabs
    Expand tabs in input lines, and retab those lines on output. This is the default unless overridden by the NETABS environment variable.

-to <file>
    Specify the output for the first input file. The default is to overwrite the input, and this is true for all other input files.

-ver <file>
    Specify the output file for editing verifications when in line-by-line or non-interactive mode.

--version -version -v
    Show the current version number and then exit.

-widechars -w
    Recognize UTF-8 characters in data and command lines.

-with <file>
    Read editing commands from this file.

ENVIRONMENT

The environment variable NETABS may be set to one of the words "notabs", "tabs", "tabin", "tabout", or "tabinout" to set a default tab processing state. Unless -noinit is given, a list of initial NE commands to obey is read from the file named in the NERC environment variable, or, if that is not set, from the file called .nerc in the caller's home directory.

FURTHER INFORMATION

The NE manual gives a full description of the program and the features that it provides.

DIAGNOSTICS AND RETURN CODES

Error messages are written to the standard error stream. The return code is 0 for success, 4 for warnings, 8 for errors, 12 for serious errors, and 16 for disasters (a little bit of IBM history here).

AUTHOR

Philip Hazel
Cambridge, England.

REVISION

Last updated: 09 August 2018
Copyright (c) 2018 Philip Hazel