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The Profile Files

Although exaEdit has default settings for most of the parameters, which are most sensible in the most frequent cases, there will occur situations, in which you would prefer other default settings. To solve this problem there are profile files, i.e. files containing exaEdit commands that are executed when you start exaEdit. Strictly speaking, the profile commands are even executed before the loading of the file you wish to edit happens.

There are two kinds of profile files for exaEdit:

The installation profile is named such, because it is in effect for the installed editor, no matter by whom it is called (on multi-user-systems). The private profile on the other hand depends on the user identification which it is called from. In detail, exaEdit acts like this:

exaEdit finds its installation profile via environment variable, in this case called

To test whether this environment variable exists and which value it has, you may use the Unix command

and in Windows systems you apply the command

If the value of EXAEDITIP begins with the character `-', it means that there is no profile file.

But if the environment variable EXAEDITIP does not exist at all, exaEdit uses the file .exaeditip in the directory exaEdit has been called from. If this file does not exist, exaEdit works without the installation profile.

You create the private profile file on your own when you need it. The file is called

and is searched for by exaEdit in the directory from which exaEdit has been called. If this file does not exist there, exaEdit searches for it in the HOME directory. If there is no such file either, exaEdit works without a private profile.

exaEdit finds the home directory in Unix systems via the environment variable HOME, in Windows systems via the two environment variables HOMEDRIVE and HOMEPATH. The values of these you may determine as described above with the commands echo or set.

exaEdit first processes the installation profile and then the private one, which allows you to override commands defined in the installation profile you do not like with your own corresponding commands in your private profile.

A useful example for an entry in the profile file is the command

which changes the command separator for the concatenation of exaEdit commands from `;' to `,'. This change is an advantage if the character `;' can be only produced with the help of the shift key and, in opposition to this, the character `,' can be typed without the shift key.

When exaEdit gets started and looks for the profile files in different ways (as explained above), the program stores the current situation without informing you directly: the processing of the profile is supposed to happen noiseless. However, you can inform yourself whenever you want during the exaEdit session how the profiles work at the start of exaEdit. You receive this information by calling the command

The messages exaEdit presents are supposed to explain themselves. A short version of the actions exaEdit generally tries is available with the command

profilex is only a help text, not a command. The functions of the command PROFILE are described further down.

Some of the preferences for exaEdit are workfile specific, e.g. the width of the number area you set with the command SKEY. You can always put such a command in a exaEdit profile, so it is executed every time when exaEdit is started. But if you then open an additional workfile the command SKEY works with its standard preference again. To make sure the exaEdit profile is acknowledged in those cases, too, you can precede exaEdit command lines in the profile with

Lines marked such will be evaluated just like the other lines when exaEdit is started. But whenever you open a new workfile or delete a workfile completely with the command all command lines in the profile beginning with an exclamation mark will be evaluated again.

With the command profile and suitable parameters you can

the command lines of the profile.

When doing so, you can specify whether you want all lines to be processed, or only the ones beginning with an exclamation mark. Details on how you have to use the command profile to achieve this can be found by typing help profile or at the extensive description of all exaEdit commands in section The Commands in Detail.

As already mentioned at the appropriate places, the commands of the profile file are executed before the loading of the file or when creating a new workfile. But sometimes it may be an advantage to have a record of exaEdit command executed at any time. This is possible; not with a exaEdit profile but with the exaEdit command EXEC.

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Next: Online Help Previous: Parameter Variables Up: Functions