# Solved: working in the dos editor



## draffe (Jul 16, 2008)

I'm an old dos user (in more ways than one) but I can't figure something out.

I'm editing an ascii dat file into which I have to add a header and a footer. The header must begin the first line of data -- not a new line. If I have insert on (using the keyboard button), when I type, the inserted info writes over what is there. With the insert button off, the keyboard dings and won't let me type at all.

Now, why do this in the dos editor? The header (and the footer as well) include ridiculously long filler fields (282 bytes long) and the dos editor is the only thing I know that can tell me what column position I'm in. Otherwise, I have to resort to counting spacebar clicks and I usually end up being wrong.

Other solutions welcome as well. Thanks all.


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## TheOutcaste (Aug 8, 2007)

Welcome to TSG!

Don't know what's up with your DOS editor. Insert and Overstrike both work just fine for me, running edit in a DOS window on XP Pro. Tested with 400-500 character lines in a 5325 KB file. Started getting *Out of far memory* errors with larger files, so if the file was too big I would expect an error, not just beeps.

You might want to check out one of these free notepad replacements. Both will show line and column position, and both have many useful features including regular expression (RegExp) search and replace.

Either one will save you from counting spacebar clicks

Notetab
Notepad++

HTH

Jerry


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## draffe (Jul 16, 2008)

:up:Thank you so much. I concur this should easily work --perhaps it's a keyboard issue. Will try the resources you suggested.


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