User:Eric Pement

Background Info

Technical

My technical interests began with ZCPR and 4DOS in the 1980s. I was a BBS sysop (system operator) from 1990 to 1996, and have worked as a web master, web developer, or web programmer since 1996. I spent many years working with BBS scripting languages, file location and description utilities, disk/sector editors, and various communications tools.

As a writer and user of ASCII delimited files, I have a special fondness for programs that do text and file manipulation, such as sed, awk, and perl. I am the author and maintainer of the sed FAQ and the sed one-line scripts, and one of the founding members of the sed-users mailing list. The list of sed one-line scripts has been translated into multiple languages and has been reprinted on many web sites as a handy tool for Unix users.

I also have an affinity for interactive text and programmer's editors, including Emacs, Multi-Edit, PFE, VDE, TSE, TDE, and others going all the way back to WordStar and Perfect Writer in the early CP/M days, and an equally strong interest in batch files, shell scripts, and Unix or DOS command-line tools that perform simple tasks very well and can run unattended without user intervention.

Personal

I am a resident of Florida, married with three children, and have two degrees: M.B.A. (North Park University, 2006) and M.Div. (North Park Theological Seminary, 2009). I have been a Christian since 1973 and lived 24 years at Jesus People USA, a Christian communal group in Chicago. I worked for Cornerstone magazine in various editorial capacities for over 22 years, ultimately becoming Executive Editor, and was a regular teacher on cults and world religions at Cornerstone Festival for 17 years.

I'm interested in many world religions and new religious movements from both a personal and academic perspective, although my own worldview aligns with classical and historic Christianity. Recently, I served as Associate Editor and contributor for The Evangelical Dictionary of World Religions (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2018). I describe myself as having a skeptic's mind, a servant's heart, a child's curiosity, and a pastor's faith.

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Eric Pement