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Date:	Tue, 1 Dec 1992 02:57:19 -0500
From:	byron@netapp.com (Byron Rakitzis)
Message-Id: <9212010757.AA18624@netapp.netapp.com>
To:	alan@oldp.astro.wisc.edu, sam-fans@hawkwind.utcs.toronto.edu
Subject: Re: Lines and last lines.

This is a feature, not a bug:

	x<space>

is the same thing as

	x/.*\n/

(modulo the RE weirdness that's being argued right now which I don't
want to get tied up with --- i.e., in short, x<space> splits the
current selection into lines. This *is* documented in the tutorial if
not in the man page as well.)

BTW, it is a *very* handy shortcut for emulating ed commands:

	,x g/foo/d

is the same as ed's

	g/foo/d

PS I just checked the man page and it says that

	"If the regular expression and its slashes are omitted, /.*\n/
	is assumed."

but of course this is not the whole story since sam barfs on

	,xg/foo/d

(Another mini-gripe I have with sam: the lexical analyzer, such as it
is, sure is weird. What's the point of having delimiters between one-
letter commands like x and g anyway? Isn't that almost the point of
one-letter commands? I guess, he says sarcastically, the delimiters are
there to disambiguate "c d" and "cd" (the only multicharacter command
in sam that I know of).)

(BTW, to the religious: my negative comments about sam are meant as
constructive criticism. I don't think Rob Pike is God, and I don't
think he achived perfection with sam. He did come fairly close though,
didn't he?)