response 5 of 28:

Mar 14 18:41 UTC 1995

Where do we have this listed? I have a printout and still use it.
It's good enough to keep. New users might like to see it.

response 9 of 28:

Mar 15 07:17 UTC 1995

It reads a compressed file.

response 11 of 28:

Mar 18 03:12 UTC 1995

(Various standard & semi-standard Unix compression utilities use file
extensions of .Z and .z (and now .gz) by default.  Hence zcat,
zmore, etc., etc.)

response 13 of 28:

Jan 25 18:54 UTC 1996

This will do it for your whole file:           :%s/^>//g
This will do it everywhere in lines 5-10:      :5,10s/^>//g

If I say that ":" gets you into last-line mode, that "s" is the command
("substitute"), that "/" is a separator, that "^" matches beginning of
string (in this case of line), and that "g" is for "global" and says
to do them all, I expect that you can figure out how to extend this
to other replacements, right?     8-{)]

And if I say that I'm not sure what the alternatives to "g" are (my
experience being that including & omitting it seem to work the
same), I'm sure that someone will explain.

You can also add to the end a "c" (with or without the "g"), and you
will be prompted for confirmation for each replacement.

response 17 of 28:

Jan 28 04:15 UTC 1996

Marks come from ed.  In ed, you can mark a line by saying "kX", (where X
is a letter a-z) and you can then use marks in line ranges in place of
numbers.

So, if you wanted to capitalize all occurences of "the" from lines 3-6,
you could say:
        3ka
        6kb
        'a,'bs/the/THE/g

You can use marks just the same way in command mode in vi (which is of
course just "ex").  So, ":3ka"<return> will indeed mark line 3.  But you
can also mark lines directly in visual command mode, with m - "ma" will
mark a mark on the current line, just like ":ka"<return>.  You can go to
a mark with 'X in visual mode - so "'a" will go to mark a.  "''"p is
kind of handy - it will go back to the last place you came from - so you
can search for a string, then jump back to where you were.

I most commonly use marks for moving and shifting text blocks.  In
visual mode, I can mark the start with "ma", go to the end of what I
want to shift, and say ">'a" to shift from the current line to the line
marked a.  Or, if I want to move stuff, I can mark where I want to move
stuff to with "mc", then the start & end with "ma" & "mb", and then say
":'a,'bm'c"<return>

Regarding g & c.  Ed doesn't support c.  Both ex & ed support p there.
p will print out the last line that was changed - which saves
typing p on a separate line.  ex has a "set autoprint" which defaults
on & acts as if a 'p' were always supplied.  Without g, ex will
indeed only change one occurrence per line, so if the file reads:
        aruba
        mta
        robh
and you say 1,$s;a;b;
you will get:
        bruba
        mtb
        robh

response 19 of 28:

Jan 31 14:05 UTC 1996

Almost as convenient as dragging a mouse! :)

response 23 of 28:

Aug 29 14:01 UTC 1996

(Which is short for "set numbers".  But yes, that's the way.)