LinuxBBQ

[yt]y_PZPpWTRTU[/yt]

The GNU line editor. It can save some serious ass. Let's create a file, save it, edit it, move stuff around.

Starting 'ed'

ed is not always included, so you might wat to install it. Have a try, in your terminal, enter
Ed is now waiting for input, this is the command mode. Not quite obvious? Let's change the prompt:
which brings up an asterisk as prompt. In the future you can start ed, showing a prompt like "Ready:" the next time using ed -p Ready:

Creating a new file

Creating a new file happens by appending lines to the existing file (which is of course not existing yet), so let's append:
and start to type. Hitting enter bring the newline, and we stay in append mode. When you finished, hit Enter and type a period. That's how it looks like from the start to here:
Remember, the asterisk is our command prompt, so now ed is waiting for input.

Save and Quit

Let's just imagine we want to write this file to disk and then quit (much like :wq) - save it as 'pensi.txt'
and let's quit: If we enter a it is similar to vi's :q! - an unconditional quit: all changes are lost.

Tomorrow: edit an existing file, search and replace.

cool! thanks :)

Haha, that is pretty cool mb. almost like ability to take a quick note at any time, without extra overhead. Nice HowTo

http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.txt

....even I think that ed is too minimal.

^ lol :)

Bringing this thread back up, because ed is a fine tools I like to use from time to time (read: when vim takes about 2 seconds to go down one line, because of a shitty laggy connection).

There are many useful trick one should be aware of when using ed. The first one is that you can use external tools:
ed also has a builtin sed-like substitution engine:
And then, here are a few handy commands worth knowing:
I can't encourage Vim users enough to give ed a try. You'll get WAY MORE proficient at Vim after a week using only ed (even a single day should be fine !)
After all, vi was only the visual mode of ed ;)

Thanks for the bump ;)