A Beginner’s Guide to the ed Text Editor

If you’re interested in diving into the world of UNIX text editors, ed is a great place to start. While it may not be widely used today, understanding the basics of ed can provide a solid foundation for working with other text editors. In this guide, we’ll walk you through the essentials of using ed.

To launch ed, simply type ed into your terminal. This will start an interactive session where you can begin editing your text. To enter write mode, type a on a single line and press enter. Now you can start inputting your text. Once you’re finished, conclude by typing a dot (.) on a new line and pressing enter.

To save your changes, use the w command followed by a file name. This will write the buffer to the specified file and display the number of bytes written. And if you’re ready to exit the editor, simply type q.

When you already have a file and want to edit it using ed, invoke the editor by typing ed <filename>. To add content to the file, press a to enter append mode and start typing your new text, which will be appended to the end of the file.

While working within an ed session, you can use the ,p command to print the current content of the file. This allows you to review your changes and ensure everything is as expected.

By familiarizing yourself with the basics of the ed text editor, you’ll gain a solid understanding of fundamental text editing techniques. While it may not be the most commonly used editor nowadays, the concepts you learn with ed can be applied to other text editors. So don’t be afraid to start exploring and experimenting with this classic UNIX editor!

tags: [“UNIX text editor”, “ed”, “interactive session”, “write mode”, “save buffer”, “file editing”]