Man1 - ed.1

ed - line-oriented text editor

ed [/options/] [/file/]

GNU ed is a line-oriented text editor. It is used to create, display, modify and otherwise manipulate text files, both interactively and via shell scripts. A restricted version of ed, red, can only edit files in the current directory and cannot execute shell commands. Ed is the ’standard’ text editor in the sense that it is the original editor for Unix, and thus widely available. For most purposes, however, it is superseded by full-screen editors such as GNU Emacs or GNU Moe.

-h, –help

display this help and exit

-V, –version

output version information and exit

-E, –extended-regexp

use extended regular expressions

-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 © 2021 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.