HOWTO: /bin/ed by example

Below I show an editing session that uses basic /bin/ed commands.

/bin/ed is the standard Unix Editor

ed was written round 1969. It’s still here. grep comes from /bin/ed: g/re/p works as an ed command to search *g*lobally for a *re*gular expression and *p*rint the matching lines. ed commands will be familiar to users of sed, as sed is the “stream editor” with a very similar set of commands. ed commands will be familiar to vi users. If you type “:” in vi, you get, basically, an ed prompt. You can type ed commands (see below) and they work. “vi” is the “visual interface” to ed (or one of it’s successors). Though I am a die hard emacs user, often when I just want to do a quick edit or take some note I just fire up /bin/ed and go….

1 A sample /bin/ed session…


  gmj@ed tmp [master] $ ed -p: ed-HOWTO-blog.org  # use ":" for the prompt, just like vi
  ed-HOWTO-blog.org: No such file or directory
  :# append some lines
  :a
  * Write a blog post about /bin/ed
    /bin/ed is "The standard Unix editor" ... since 1969
    It was written by Richard Stallman

  * Show some basic ed commands
    - "a" :: append
    - "p" :: print
    - "s" :: substitute
    - "w" :: write
    - "q" :: quit
    - "." :: end input
  :
  :# Whoops, Stallman did not write ed
  :# go back to line 1
  :1
  * Write a blog post about /bin/ed
  :# make sure we are at line 1
  :.=
  1
  :# find the mistake
  :/Stallman/
    It was written by Richard Stallman
  :.=
  3
  :# its on line three
  :# fix it
  :s/Richard Stallman/Ken Thompson/
  :# let's see the fix
  :p
    It was written by Ken Thompson
  :# let's see the start of the file to here
  :1,.p
  * Write a blog post about /bin/ed
    /bin/ed is "The standard Unix editor" ... since 1969
    It was written by Ken Thompson
  :# OK, looks good, but one more change
  :p
    It was written by Ken Thompson
  :s/Ken Thompson/Ken Thompson or maybe Dennis Ritchie/p
    It was written by Ken Thompson or maybe Dennis Ritchie
  :# let's see the whole file now, it's short
  :1,$p
  * Write a blog post about /bin/ed
    /bin/ed is "The standard Unix editor" ... since 1969
    It was written by Ken Thompson or maybe Dennis Ritchie

  * Show some basic ed commands
    - "a" :: append
    - "p" :: print
    - "s" :: substitute
    - "w" :: write
    - "q" :: quit
    - "." :: end input
  :# now lets grep (g/re/p) for lines that contain "ed"
  :g/ed/p
  * Write a blog post about /bin/ed
    /bin/ed is "The standard Unix editor" ... since 1969
  * Show some basic ed commands
  :# ok, this looks good.  write and quit
  :w
  288
  :q
  gmj@ed tmp [master] $

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