Deleting Lines

The d prefix command deletes the line where it is entered. (Do not confuse it with the delete key, which deletes characters and spaces within a line.) You type a letter d (for delete) in any position of the prefix area of that line. You can type a number before or after the d to delete that number of lines. The following are all valid ways to type a d prefix command.

====D   Deletes this line.
d====   Deletes this line.
10d==   Deletes this line and the next nine lines.

You want to delete the line containing A JUG OF WINE and the line containing THOU. Press PF8 to scroll forward. Move the cursor to the line containing A JUG OF WINE, and enter the d prefix command that deletes two lines.

2d=== A JUG OF WINE

When you press Enter, the two lines are deleted.

Can you press ERASE EOF key to clear a line? Yes, but there are two things you should be aware of. First, you must move the cursor to column one in the line and press the space bar once before pressing ERASE EOF. If you do not press the space bar, the data will come back in the line the next time you press Enter. This prevents you from erasing a line if you press ERASE EOF accidentally. Second, the data will be removed from the line, but the blank line will remain in the file. So it is better to use a d prefix command if you want to delete a line. If you want to delete only some of the characters in a line, instead of an entire line, you can use the delete key.

Now press the Enter key to move your cursor to the command line, and enter:

====> file

The FILELIST display returns to the screen. If you needed to work on another file, you would move the cursor to the correct line and press PF11.

The rest of this section does not involve any terminal exercises for you to do, only examples of things that you can try later on. Because you are finished editing files for now, press PF3 to exit from FILELIST.