Ian Broster wrote: > the argument can include arbitrary perl code of course, > it doesn't have to be a regexp, the code is executed once > per line. > > Why cannot Edit be written like this? [omitted perl code that loops over lines and evals regexp on each] Because sometimes you do not want to limit yourself to single lines. The editing language of sam (and acme's Edit) is much richer - although I admit I seldomly use its full power (which mostly shows I'm still not using it to the full power). Have a look at Rob Pike's "Strucural Regular Expressions", available via http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?StructuralRegularExpressions . Axel - who nowadays mostly uses plan9ports acme, using the patch that makes it do wily style $var substition