moe - Man Page

My Own (text) Editor

Examples (TL;DR)

Synopsis

moe [global_options] [[+[line[,col]]] file_name [file_options]]...

Description

GNU moe is a console text editor for ISO-8859 and ASCII character encodings. It has a modeless, user-friendly interface, online help, multiple windows, global search/replace (on all buffers at once), block operations, automatic indentation, word wrapping, file name completion, directory browser, duplicate removal from prompt histories, delimiter matching, text conversion from/to UTF-8, romanization, etc. The file size, line length, number of buffers, and undo/redo capability are only limited by the amount of memory available and the size of the address space of your machine.

Moe respects your work. By default it won't automatically add, change, or remove a single byte in your files. Moe is a WYTIWYG (what you type is what you get) editor.

Moe can easily edit thousands of files at the same time.

'global_options' are a mix of editor options and default 'file_options'. Most long option names have a negative form '--backup' '--no-backup'.

Each file name may be preceded by '+[line[,column]]' to start the cursor at the line, and optionally column, specified. 'line' and 'column' are applied to subsequent files until new values are specified for them. A '+' alone puts the cursor at end-of-buffer.

A hyphen '-' used as a file name argument means standard input. Directories are recursively descended into.

Editor options

-h,  --help

display this help and exit

-V,  --version

output version information and exit

-b,  --backup

create backup files (default)

-B,  --no-backup

don't create backup files

-e,  --exit-ask

make save-and-close ask always for confirmation

-H,  --smart-home

go home, then go to first non-blank character

-i,  --ignore-case

make search case insensitive by default

-k,  --keep-lines=<n>

number of lines to keep for PgUp/PgDn

-m,  --max-windows=<n>

max number of windows to show at once

-n,  --indent-step=<n>

number of spaces to add when indenting a block

-s,  --search-wrap

make search wrap at end of file

-u,  --auto-unmark

turn off highlighting after any block operation

-x,  --rectangle

rectangular block mode

File options

-a,  --auto-indent

enable auto indent

-l,  --lmargin=<col>

set left margin

-r,  --rmargin=<col>

set right margin

-o,  --read-only

make buffer read-only

-O,  --overwrite

disable insert mode

-w,  --word-wrap

enable word wrapping

-W,  --no-word-wrap

disable word wrapping

-2,  --two-spaces

make reformat put two spaces after period

Exit status: 0 for a normal exit, 1 for environmental problems (invalid command-line options, I/O errors, etc), 2 to indicate an invalid or unreadable input file, 3 for an internal consistency error (e.g., bug) which caused moe to panic.

Reporting Bugs

Report bugs to bug-moe@gnu.org
Moe home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/moe/moe.html
General help using GNU software: http://www.gnu.org/gethelp

See Also

The full documentation for moe is maintained as a Texinfo manual.  If the info and moe programs are properly installed at your site, the command

info moe

should give you access to the complete manual.

Info

January 2024 GNU moe 1.14