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My ed(1) Toolbox

By Artyom Bologov
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Almost monochrome grayish soft thumbnail. In the middle, "ed(1)" is
written by hand. Around it "aed", "xed", "oed", and "wed" are
written. There are also "vi", "ex", and "sed", but these are crossed
out with deep blood red. Same red outlines the central "ed(1)". In
the corners, attributions to "Artyom Bologov" and "aartaka.me" are
barely visible. Someone sure doesn't like vi...

Apparently, I'm a huge ed(1) fan. I keep posting about it and use it
as e.g. my Git editor, sudo editing tool, and my static site
generator. But am I using it raw and standard as it is? Sometimes
yes, but mostly no. This post is a listing of all the ed
implementations and scripts I use.

GNU ed + red--Eternal Classics #

ed(1) is the standard text editor. And it's available on most UNIX/
POSIX-derived systems. (Some Linux distributions don't provide it in
default installation anymore, but that's on them!) So relying on ed
(1) and its powers is a good bet.

That's why I always have GNU ed installed on my systems. It's
battle-tested, intuitive, and easily scriptable.

Bundled with GNU ed (and any POSIX-compliand ed(1) really), red(1) is
the "restricted" version of ed(1). It's locked to the directory it's
called in. And has no ability to pass through to the shell. I find it
relatively useless though: I use ed(1) on secure systems and never
allow anyone to access my precious ed(1) session. But still, red(1)
is nice to have!

oed--OpenBSD ed #

Now, GNU ed is not conforming to POSIX in some behaviors:

  * It has more CLI flags
  * It has wq
  * It has POSIX extended regular expressions (EREs,) while most
    other implementations don't. Thus making EREs a non-portable
    extension

I risk introducing non-portable behavior if I only focus on GNU ed.
And I want to have my scripts (including my website build scripts)
portable across implementations.

So I installed OpenBSD ed from the repository kindly provided by one
of the maintainers. And now I can safely replace ed with oed for most
of my scripts. As the least effort shot at portability. It's too
convenient to not use it now.

wed--ed wImproved #

I asked it on GNU ed mailing list whether they might support
scripting abilities. Like sed(1) -e and -f flags or as a special
executable for it. One of the maintainers (predictably) replied that
they (mostly) abide by POSIX and won't add it.

But! there was a person that emailed me personally and recommended
slewsys ed as a version of ed(1) supporting scripts (among many other
things.) So I installed it and called it wed(1) just to distinguish
this re-implementation from The ed(1).

I don't really use wed(1)--I'm fine with standard ed(1) (and my
scripting wrapper for it). Bust still, it's a modern and
user-friendly extension. Want to get started with ed(1) but don't
want to deviate from the tradition?--this is the one to start with,
probably.

Don't get wed to an anime hologram. Get wed(1).

aed--Blaphemy Against Minimalism #

I understand the complaints about ed(1) being somewhat hostile to new
users. It's usually mitigated by the time spend with this magnificent
software. But still, ed(1) is not perfect and might need some
modernization.

So I made aed(1) as a better and more interactive ed(1). It's mostly
abusing Readline and shell scripts to deliver a friendlier
experience. With syntax highlighting and perfectly inline-editable
inputs.

So once you're comfortable with basic ed(1). (Or it's slightly
friendlier wed(1) version.) You might want to speed up your workflows
with aed(1)!

I might've gone too far though.

xed--You Don't Need sed #

I have a user-friendly ed(1) on me now for interactive use. One
use-case for ed(1) is not covered yet though--scripting! Having to do
this type of newline-delimited scripts is too verbose compared to sed
(1) ones.

dirname=$(printf "a
$1
.
g|/|s|.*/||
p
Qn" | ed -s)

Relatively ugly ed(1) script

What if I told you this is doable with a one-liner using my xed(1)
script? Here:

xed "a\n$1\n.\ng|/|s|.*/||\np"

xed script

It's not the prettiest one, but it's fulfilling many sed(1)
use-cases. Speaking of the devil...

sed and ex... No. #

You don't need sed(1).

You don't need ex(1) either, because it's too vi(1)-oriented. They
promised ed(1) eXtended, but we got ed(1) Fucked Up. Commands are
incompatible with ed(1). Configuration is useless in ex(1) mode.
Overall, ex(1) is just a poorly integrated back-end for vi(1).

My own ed(1) implementations #

If one likes some piece of software as an idea, they will inevitably
try to reproduce it. So I did. I implemented ed(1) in Brainfuck under
the aegis of Brainfuck Enterprise Solutions. I also did one in BASIC,
pushing the limits of the no-memory BASIC as far as possible. And,
finally, I did ed(1) in Modal, a term-rewriting-only system. All of
these are useable... to a certain extent. But they don't compare to
the magnificence and purity of the Standard Text Editor.

Use ed(1) #

Whatever implementation you pick (pick aed(1)!), use it and love it.
Because ed(1) deserves your love 

See also: ed-museum.

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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.