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Using ed(1) as My Static Site Generator

By Artyom Bologov

I have a long story with bipolar spikes making me re-evaluate my tech
choices. You can observe it with multiple of my website setups: I
started with Tripod, my Gemtext-oriented OOP Lisp engine. Then I used
the DSLs Common Lisp provides to generate HTML from s-expressions.
And, finally, I switched to C Preprocessor. And here's a new
flare-up, I guess?

This time I'm testing the limits of what ed-family editors can do.
Including parsing Lisp. And using ed as an everyday scripting
environment.

I've also tried ex/vi (not Vim!) To the point of making a Lisp
programming config for it. But ex/vi are too troublesome, so forget
it.

Back to ed then! Here's a compiler from high-level Modal system to
ed, written in ed itself. Here's a script processing Wisp syntax
extension for Lisps. And here's a whole category for ed tasks I
solved on RosettaCode. The overarching narrative can be a
transformation from one format to the other. Like... what site
generators do? So I can use ed as my site generator, and get away
with it?

Setup: Glorified ed Scripts #

So the way ed scripts are ran:

ed -s file.html < script.ed

Example script run

This incantation

  * Opens a file.html,
  * Reads commands from stdin (redirected script.ed.)
  * And saves/writes (w command) file if there are respective
    commands in the stdin.

A huge advantage is that I can swap commands in the script file.
Replacing writing commands to printing ones, for example. This way, I
can print the content of the post without modifying it. Y'know, for
blog debugging (everyone does that?)

With that general formula, I can abstract article builds per format
with two scripts: a preprocessing (deabbreviation and escaped char
expansion) script and the actual conversion. Here's how my Makefile
rule for .txt building looks like:

%.txt: %.h
        -cp $^ $@
        -ed -s $@ < scripts/preprocess.ed
        -ed -s $@ < scripts/totxt.ed

Makefile implicit rule for conversion from .h to actual output text
files

Repeat this for every format (my site supports five atm) with
dedicated to*.ed scripts. And that's it!

Advantages #

I can use whatever syntax I want now! With C Preprocessor, I was
restricted to X(ARG1, ARG2, ...) structure for all my elements. With
ed, I can go crazy with something like <cd code-here>, imitating
self-closing HTML tags. Or whatever. Closer to the way I model my
writing.

Another upside: I don't have to rewrite all of my posts in a new
format. My ed scripts are processing the old preprocessor-oriented
format too! So ed is capable of replacing C Preprocessor and even
adds some features on top.

One more advantage is that there no longer are weird chars breaking
everything. When I see an apostrophe, my eye starts twitching. C
Preprocessor recognizes apostrophe as a char marker and reads the
rest of the line verbatim. Same goes for double quote and hash.
Special chars, forbidden magic.

In general, ed has this sloppiness of regex/substitutions. And
interactivity of a REPL (well, to an extent.) Perfect for text
processing and document authoring.

Limitations #

ed is stupid (I say lovingly.) It has no file inclusion, for one. So
C Preprocessor's #include is no longer accessible. I manage without
it, because most of the files I include are easily hard-codeable. But
the mere inability to include arbitrary files is somewhat alarming.

Another problem that I already got the taste of: having arbitrary
substitutions at the fingertips spoils me. I might end up with some
really otherworldly syntax without noticing. And I wouldn't be able
to rollback to e.g. C Preprocessor to generate my posts. But then, ed
is so simple and more or less standard, so what can go wrong? It did
go wrong

Arch and Alpine package slightly different versions of ed. Alpine
version was breaking on line joining and variable substitution. So I
had to swap Alpine for Arch on the Gitlab CI. I would have been able
to stay on Alpine if I was able to debug what's wrong with ed there.
But Gitlab (like any other CI platform?) doesn't make it easy to
debug things on CI.

Should You Use ed As Site Generator? #

No, not at all. It's a weird choice that's only there because I'm
having a new phase. But still, it's fun! Try ed if you have too much
free time and are bored out of your mind 

Leave feedback! (via email) #

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This page is Designed to Last and generated on Tue Apr 29 23:50:54
+04 2025 with the help of ed(1). You can view page sources by
appending .htm to the page URL. You can also view alternative .txt,
.gmi, .7 (man), and .tex versions this way.

Copyright 2022-2025 Artyom Bologov (aartaka). Any and all opinions
listed here are my own and not representative of my employers;
future, past and present.