Robelle Consulting announced at HP World its Qedit editor has four major enhancement areas: improved Posix file editing; more powerful pattern searching with support for regular expressions; alias command functionality which allows a programmer to rename Qedit commands according to customization preferences; and enhancements for COBOL programmers. Qedit has offered a familiar environment for editing Posix files; its newest features let a programmer use the “Set HFS” command so Qedit automatically recognizes when a programmer is working with a Posix file. The new command “Set StringDelimiters” lets you define default delimiter characters, so filenames can use the remainder of the delimiter character set. A new “$File” command allows a programmer to explicitly mark the beginning and end of a filename.

Version 4.8 extends regular expression capabilities by leveraging Qedit’s smart string searching capabilities, allowing specification of which characters are expected in search patterns. For example, you can specify which characters you expect in a particular position, search for special characters, or specify if a character can be optional or repeating. The new version also lets programmers reorder text with a single command instead of using several “Change” passes. A new functionality to define “Alias Commands” provides a way to rename Qedit commands, eliminating conflicts with the names of MPE commands, UDCs, or command files. The COBOL enhancements include better integration between COBOL source code and COPYLIB members, and including COPYLIB members in string searches.