hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr3680.txt

Episode: 3680
Title: HPR3680: EDIT
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3680/hpr3680.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 03:45:18

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3,680 for Friday 9 September 2022.
Today's show is entitled, Edit.
It is part of the series, DOS.
It is hosted by AOKA, and is about 12 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, more on DOS.
This time it is Edit.
Hello, this is AOKA, welcoming you to Hacker Public Radio.
And another exciting episode in our ongoing DOS series.
Yes, there's still a little bit more to talk about here.
Now, I want to do this time is to talk about an applet that comes with DOS called Edit.
Now, the Edit program that comes with DOS looks like another external DOS command.
But I call it an applet, and I think there's a good reason for that.
An applet is the name given to a small limited application.
In this case, Edit is an ASCII text editor.
It is a handy application composed of two files, Edit.com, which is the application itself,
and Edit.hlp, which contains all of the help files.
Also, Edit is a basic program.
So you need to have qbasic.exe available as well if you want to run it.
Now, this is not a problem if you're running Edit from a hard drive where you have installed DOS.
But if you want to run it from a floppy disk, such as an emergency boot disk or an emergency utilities disk,
you need to remember to place qbasic.exe on the same floppy as Edit.com.
Now, why would you want to do this?
Why would you want to use Edit?
It is a very basic text editor.
OK.
If you're a Linux or a Unix hand, and you've been using things like VIM and EMAX and what have you,
you're not going to be impressed by Edit.
But remember, this was something that we were looking at in, like, 1981, maybe.
It was not something you'd use for writing a novel or for desktop publishing.
But it is a very handy little program because it'll fit on that floppy disk and enable you to do some things.
Now, there are two major uses.
First is editing the configuration files.
And the two files most commonly edited this way are config.sys and autoexec.bat.
So if you have Edit, you can edit both of those files.
And I think you can start to see why, yes, you know, this is the kind of thing you'd want to be able to do with an emergency boot disk or an emergency utilities disk.
Now, the other common use for Edit in general is to create or edit batch files, which, you know, autoexec.bat is a batch file.
But you can do other things.
Now, batch files are files that contain DOS commands, which are executed in order whenever the batch file is run.
Now, we'll cover these topics in future installments, but the first useful to learn a little about the tool we'll be using.
So how do we use the Edit applet?
Well, from the command prompt, simply type command edit.
Now, what that is going to do in the background is it's going to go to edit.com.
And then edit.com is going to say, oh, I'm a basic program.
So I need to have the basic environment up and running before I can do anything.
So then it will open QBASIC, run QBASIC.exe, edit will open inside of that, and then you're ready to go.
Now, when you do this, you'll see a screen that says welcome to the MSDOS editor.
Under this is an option that says press Enter to see the survival guide.
Now, this brings up a one screen summary of how to get around in Edit.
Now, it turns out that this involves some keyboard commands that carry over to Windows as well.
So learning this can pay dividends in the future.
Some day you may actually need to know how to navigate Windows without a mouse,
and knowing these keyboard equivalents will pay off.
I know it's hard to believe that you would navigate any kind of computer system these days without a mouse.
But in the days when we were doing this, you didn't have a mouse unless you also loaded a mouse driver,
which was not part of the operating system.
You would buy a Logitech mouse, and then there would be a disk that would have the driver.
You'd have to install the driver, and that driver would have to be loaded in your config sis file.
It was a different world we were living in.
So knowing how to do that was a good idea, and you know, to this day every once in a while something will happen.
And it's like the fact that I know some keyboard commands pays off for me.
Now, on the top of your screen is the menu bar.
And since the following menus, which should be familiar to anyone who has used Windows,
since the menus are very similar.
The first one is File, then Edit, Search, Options, and last of all, Help.
So, you know, we're kind of used to the same menus in much the same order these days.
If you press the Alt key that activates the menu bar,
pressing the Alt key while you're in Edit, of course.
The first letter of each menu is now shown in white to indicate the hot letter you can use to activate that menu.
So the File menu is already highlighted in a black box.
If you hit Enter, that menu will open down.
If any menu choice is highlighted, you can hit Enter to select that menu choice.
You can also use Arrow buttons.
The Up and Down arrows move up and down within a menu.
The right and left arrows move from one menu to the next.
Note that each menu also has many options that also have hot letters or some other keyboard equivalent.
Now, hot letters are the ones that work when you hold down the Alt key while pressing that letter.
So the File menu is Alt F.
I think we're all used to that one.
So if you're working on a file and you want to check the Help system,
you just hold down the Alt key and press H and that menu will open.
In Windows, it works just the same except there the hot letters are underlined.
Now, if you look at the bottom of the screen, you'll see some other keyboard shortcuts.
The first one is also for the Help system, which you can get to by pressing F1.
Now, that's not two different keys.
F and then one, it refers to the function keys at the top of the keyboard.
Pressing F1 for help is another semi-standard in the Windows world.
Not all programs follow this practice, but most do.
So if you're ever at a loss in any program, press F1.
See what happens.
At this point, you know at least three ways to get to the Help system and two ways to get to any menu option.
Well, little practice.
You can get around quite easily in edit.
Now, if you open the Edit application as we did above,
you will see that you're working on an untitled document.
Now, the moment you save the document, and if you want to do that,
it would be Alt plus F to open the File menu and an S for Save.
You will see the title change to the name of your document.
The Save dialog window allows you to create the name.
Now, make sure it is no more than eight characters and no more than three letters for the extension.
This is DOS.
It has the 8.3 limitation.
You can also choose which directory or drive you want to save it to.
And once you have everything right, you need to select OK,
where if you change your mind, select Cancel.
To navigate from one element to the next on the screen, you use the Tab key.
By the way, I remember jumping from one thing to the next in Windows using the Tab key.
Again, it's a little survival strategy when for some reason your mouse isn't working.
Now, you can also include a file name as an argument in the Edit command.
If the file already exists, edit will open that file.
If it does not already exist, edit assumes you're creating a new file with this name
and opens a blank screen ready for you to start typing.
Now, edit is a fairly primitive application,
but it does have some good basic capabilities.
From the Edit menu, you can do Cut, Copy and Paste in your files.
And from the search menu, you can find a text string
and even change it to something else when you find it,
or classic find and replace.
In the Options menu, you will find you can change the default color scheme
in case white text on a blue background disagrees with you.
I tend to change mine and I still do this in terminal emulation programs and everything else.
I like black text on a white background.
It's just, to me, it is more readable than anything else, but that's its personal preference.
Now, can you use edit with a mouse?
Yeah, you can.
Just assuming you have a mouse in your DOS environment,
sure, it is DOS, however.
So before you do that, you better make sure you've got the mouse driver loaded.
And in most of the cases where you want to use edit,
you will not have a mouse driver installed.
And I have therefore focused on using a keyboard.
You know, I'm thinking this is an emergency boot disk kind of thing.
And if you're in an emergency boot disk situation in DOS land,
chances are you do not have a functioning mouse at that point.
Now, in the long run, I think you'll be happier mastering keyboard navigation
and using the ALT key, the arrow keys, and the tab key will become second nature.
And if you ever do find yourself trying to navigate in Windows with a mouse,
you know, these skills still come in handy, you know,
because sometimes the mouse just isn't working.
Many times I've seen people completely stymied by a situation where a program window
has somehow moved to the point where all the control buttons are off the screen.
So there's nothing for the mouse to click on.
Now, I said that the keyboard hit a few keys and everyone says,
how did you do that?
Definitely cool.
So this is a hookah for hacker public radio signing off
and it's always encouraging you to support free software.
Bye-bye.
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