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

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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

don't print byte counts or '!' 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), bmake(1), dash(1), jove(1), 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).