[HN Gopher] My Ed(1) Toolbox
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       My Ed(1) Toolbox
        
       Author : mooreds
       Score  : 72 points
       Date   : 2025-09-24 12:31 UTC (10 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (aartaka.me)
 (TXT) w3m dump (aartaka.me)
        
       | michaelsshaw wrote:
       | ed is the standard text editor!
       | 
       | https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.en.html
        
       | mkovach wrote:
       | Funny thing about ed: While it is still one of my most common
       | commands, it is also my dad's name. So, I've spent my entire
       | career regularly typing my father's name at work.
        
       | tniemi wrote:
       | I used to use EDLIN on my MS/DOS days...
       | 
       | .
        
         | marttt wrote:
         | BTW, its FreeDOS version is still being updated fairly
         | frequently. :) Current version 2.24 is from May 2024.
        
       | zabzonk wrote:
       | Ah, ed. Back in the mid 80s, I had to teach a course on Unix &
       | its tools - if I remember correctly it was called "Unix - a
       | modern OS". One of those tools was of course ed. We couldn't use
       | vi because the termcap/terminfo settings were screwed up for the
       | physical serial terminals we had - I eventually fixed this & felt
       | very pleased with myself, as those terminal config files are a
       | b*tch.
       | 
       | Still, teaching bash, C and the usual suspects along with ed was
       | very strenuous for the students, and for me - we only ran the
       | course once.
        
       | pveierland wrote:
       | Wild implementing Ed in Brainfuck: https://github.com/bf-
       | enterprise-solutions/ed.bf/blob/master...
        
       | jacobvosmaer wrote:
       | I like ed but I prefer 'sam -d' (the terminal mode of Sam). It
       | has a nice looping construct 'x' and you can open multiple files
       | and do batch edits (with 'X').
       | 
       | There is a Go port of Sam, which is easy to install:
       | 
       | go install 9fans.net/go/cmd/sam@latest
       | 
       | http://sam.cat-v.org/
        
         | marttt wrote:
         | +1, structural regular expressions are a joy to use.
         | 
         | https://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/sam_lang_tutorial/sam_tut.pd...
         | 
         | Also interesting, with other derivates of ed --
         | LineEditorFamily in the TextEditors Wiki:
         | https://texteditors.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?LineEditorFamily
        
       | secwang wrote:
       | love it.
        
       | secwang wrote:
       | Aaron have a crossplatform ed in Apl.This is great when you
       | familiar with apl.
        
       | praptak wrote:
       | https://web.archive.org/web/20250924125053/https://aartaka.m...
        
       | jonathaneunice wrote:
       | When even "IDEs are complete overkill--just use vi" sounds like
       | weakness and the entitlement of modern youth, seek out the ed fan
       | pages!
       | 
       | ed isn't quite flipping binary toggle switches to load your
       | program, but close enough to deliver the joy of brutal minimalism
       | along with a nostalgic waft of yesteryear.
        
         | whartung wrote:
         | > ed isn't quite flipping binary toggle switches to load your
         | program, but close enough to deliver the joy of brutal
         | minimalism along with a nostalgic waft of yesteryear.
         | 
         | No, that would be Teco, or, more "all we had were zeros", ED on
         | CP/M.
         | 
         | ED is, well, miserable. It's a character editor, vs a line
         | editor, and you had the joys of paging in chunks of your file
         | into working memory.
         | 
         | I, personally, find command line character editors especially
         | difficult. I find it very hard to maintain my context and, of
         | course, who doesn't just love counting characters for commands.
        
       | shawn_w wrote:
       | I don't use ed interactively but find it's really useful in shell
       | scripts that need to edit files - heredocs or piping printf
       | output (like one example in the article; never felt a need for
       | something like his xed). Even used it in a C program via popen()
       | to edit settings in a config file.
       | 
       | ed is underrated.
       | 
       | (I'm responsible for suggesting GNU ed accept posix EREs; think I
       | got the idea from NetBSD's version)
        
       | baudaux wrote:
       | ed is the first program I put in exaequOS (https://exaequos.com),
       | an OS fully running in the Web browser. For testing ed, you can
       | open a terminal and type 'ed'
        
       | Martin_Silenus wrote:
       | Forget it, you won't be able to be funnier than the 1991 TRUE
       | PATH TO NIRVANA. This is unbeatable.
        
       | mikeocool wrote:
       | After reading this article, I need to learn :wq for ed.
       | 
       | Edit - I suppose that shouldn't have been surprising:
       | 
       | w
       | 
       | q
        
         | michaelsshaw wrote:
         | Vi comes from ex, which itself came from ed.
        
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       (page generated 2025-09-24 23:01 UTC)