HP NonStop G-Series - Manual (Page 205)

Introduction to Ranges
Range Summary
5–2 058061 Tandem Computers Incorporated
When referring to columns, recall that an EDIT file generally appears as
numbered from column 1 at the leftmost edge to column 80 at the rightmost
edge of your screen; an EDIT file has a maximum width of 255 columns. A
column is all the blank and nonblank characters that have the same column
number in your file. For example, these highlighted characters:
The boy called out "Wolf, Wolf!"
and the villagers came out to help him.
A few days afterward he tried the same trick,
and again they came to his help.
Shortly after this a Wolf actually came,
but this time the villagers thought the boy was
deceiving them again and nobody came to his help.
A liar will not be believed, even when he speaks
the truth.
(including the spaces) make up column 31 in your file named AESOP.
A string is a series of characters such as a word, phrase, or number enclosed
in quotation marks. For example, the string his help.:
15 and again they came to his help.
18 deceiving them again and nobody came to his help.
appears in lines 15 and 18 of your file.
Ranges can be generally considered as ranges of lines or columns.
Commands that accept line ranges allow EDIT to work on one or more lines
of a file. Commands that specify a range of one or more columns tell EDIT
to operate on that column range throughout the entire file.