My Ed(1) Toolbox • Hacker News Board

Re: My Ed(1) Toolbox

#21

Post by michaelsshaw » Wed, Sep 24, 2025, 8:01 PM UTC

mikeocool wrote: post #20

After reading this article, I need to learn :wq for ed. Edit - I suppose that shouldn't have been surprising: w q

Vi comes from ex, which itself came from ed.

Re: My Ed(1) Toolbox

#22

Post by hejira » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 7:50 AM UTC

Is there really an advantage to using Ed instead of vim in any situation whatsoever? (Assuming you're totally comfortable with vim)

Re: My Ed(1) Toolbox

#23

Post by hejira » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 7:55 AM UTC

michaelsshaw wrote: post #2

ed is the standard text editor! https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.en.html

Hilarious! WYGIWYG :-D

Re: My Ed(1) Toolbox

#24

Post by balou23 » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 8:28 AM UTC

hejira wrote: post #22

Is there really an advantage to using Ed instead of vim in any situation whatsoever? (Assuming you're totally comfortable with vim)

Very low bandwidth situations, or when you want to apply the same steps to other files afterwards.

But if you're totally comfortable with vim you'd better use ex, which basically is both an extension to ed, and the non-interactive part of vim.

Re: My Ed(1) Toolbox

#25

Post by 3nt3 » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 9:17 AM UTC

hejira wrote: post #22

Is there really an advantage to using Ed instead of vim in any situation whatsoever? (Assuming you're totally comfortable with vim)

when you're using a teletype terminal

Re: My Ed(1) Toolbox

#26

Post by uncircle » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 10:13 AM UTC

pveierland wrote: post #8

Wild implementing Ed in Brainfuck: https://github.com/bf-enterprise-solutions/ed.bf/blob/master...

Shorter than I would have imagined.

Re: My Ed(1) Toolbox

#27

Post by aartaka » Fri, Oct 03, 2025, 6:36 PM UTC

balou23 wrote: post #24

hejira wrote: post #22

Is there really an advantage to using Ed instead of vim in any situation whatsoever? (Assuming you're totally comfortable with vim)

Very low bandwidth situations, or when you want to apply the same steps to other files afterwards. But if you're totally comfortable with vim you'd better use ex, which basically is both an extension to ed, and the non-interactive part of vim.

Not to be that person, but… ex is not ed-compatible, and it made really bad choices too.

Re: My Ed(1) Toolbox

#28

Post by aartaka » Fri, Oct 03, 2025, 6:37 PM UTC

mikeocool wrote: post #20

After reading this article, I need to learn :wq for ed. Edit - I suppose that shouldn't have been surprising: w q

Both GNU ed and OpenBSD ed support wq as an extension to POSIX. But yeah, it all depends on whether you want to stick by POSIX or common practice. I personally prefer wq for interactive sessions and w\nq for scripts.