COMPRESS   [?|#n|n|ALL]
COM

reverse command: EXPAND

This command compresses records by replacing appropriate sequences of spaces with tab signs. A tab sign means: Put spaces from here to the next tab stop between the last character to the next character. The tab stops are the columns 1, 9, 17, 25, and so on. If a line contains a row of spaces with a tab stop in between them, the first space is replaced with a tab sign (x09) and the rest of the line is moved to the left from the tab stop to the tab sign. This procedure is repeated as often as possible.

Without specification, only the current line is compressed. You may specify the number of lines n (from the current line on) or all records of the workfile with the parameter ALL.

Since this kind of compressing is not very sensible if only short sequences of spaces are compressed, exaEdit only compresses rows of at least four spaces. You can change this number with the command

compress #n

To display the current setting, you use the command

compress ?

exaEdit will answer with

compress #...

If there have been compressions after the COMPRESS command, exaEdit provides a message of success:

Compressed n times in m records by k blanks

If m=1, `records' is replaced by `record' in the display.

If there is nothing to compress, the current line remains the same. Normally, exaEdit moves the current line to the record that is compressed last. If you set n to a number that would need exaEdit to compress records beyond the end of the file (message EOF), the current line is moved to the last record of the workfile. After using parameter ALL, the current line remains the same, no matter if there has been any compression or not.