| Answers to Part 9 Exercises | |
| Answer to :ab Overload Exercise | |
| In every case, the other meaning would prevail over the :ab | |
| meaning. Reason: all the other metacharacters and metastrings | |
| take effect as soon as the last character of the string is typed | |
| in. But an abbreviation doesn't take effect until you type the | |
| next following character in, proving that your string was a word | |
| by itself. So the other metavalue will always be triggered | |
| first. | |
| Answer to Multi-Line Problem | |
| There are various uses for making some source-file commands | |
| unexecutable from screen mode. Here are two examples. | |
| You have a source file that makes complex changes in a certain | |
| area of your file, then prints the modified lines so you can look | |
| over the changes. But when you are in screen mode, the changes | |
| are displayed anyway, so the line-mode print command only | |
| duplicates the display -- but it does require you to hit the | |
| return key and wait for a screen repaint before you can continue | |
| screen editing. Putting the command to print on a second line | |
| makes sure printing will only happen when you need it. | |
| Your source file automates a lot of detail when you are doing a | |
| routine cleanup of an imported file while in line mode. But when | |
| the file is too messed up for a blind cleanup from line mode, and | |
| you must work from screen mode, a few of the commands in your | |
| source file are likely to do more harm than good. When those few | |
| commands are on a second line in the file, they only run when you | |
| are doing routine work from line mode. | |
| Back to Part 9 | |
| Back to the index |