ed - Man Page

• Start ed, editing an empty document (which can be saved as a new file in the current directory): ed
• Start ed, editing an empty document, with : as a command prompt indicator: ed -p :
• Start ed editing an existing file (this shows the byte count of the loaded file): ed -p : path/to/file
• Toggle the printing of error explanations. (By default, explanations are not printed and only a ? appears): H
• Add text to the current document. Mark completion by entering a period by itself in a new line: a<Enter>text_to_insert<Enter>.
• Print the entire document (, is a shortcut to the range 1,$ which covers the start to the end of the document): ,p
• Write the current document to a new file (the filename can be omitted if ed was called with an existing file): w filename
• Quit ed: q

tldr.sh

ed [options] [file]

GNU Ed - The GNU line editor.

-h, --help

display this help and exit

-V, --version

output version information and exit

-G, --traditional

run in compatibility mode

-l, --loose-exit-status

exit with 0 status even if a command fails

-p, --prompt=STRING

use STRING as an interactive prompt

-r, --restricted

run in restricted mode

-s, --quiet, --silent

suppress diagnostics, byte counts and '!' prompt

-v, --verbose

be verbose; equivalent to the 'H' command

Start edit by reading in 'file' if given. If 'file' begins with a '!', read output of shell command.

Exit status: 0 for a normal exit, 1 for environmental problems (file not found, invalid flags, I/O errors, etc), 2 to indicate a corrupt or invalid input file, 3 for an internal consistency error (eg, bug) which caused ed to panic.

Report bugs to bug-ed@gnu.org
Ed home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/ed/ed.html
General help using GNU software: http://www.gnu.org/gethelp

Copyright © 1994 Andrew L. Moore.
Copyright © 2017 Antonio Diaz Diaz. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

The full documentation for ed is maintained as a Texinfo manual.  If the info and ed programs are properly installed at your site, the command

info ed

should give you access to the complete manual.

alternatives(8), cdist-type__sensible_editor(7), dash(1), mailx.mailx(1), mc(1), med(1), mksh(1), opax(1), patch(1), pick(1), rc(1), rdist(1), regex(7), sed(1), spax(1), star(1), tcsh(1), xs(1).

The man page red(1) is an alias of ed(1).