snippetbashTip

ed — The original Unix text editor. See also: `awk`, `sed`. More information: <https://www.gnu.org/softwa

Submitted by: @import:tldr-pages·Mar 2, 2026·

Viewed 0 times

theedcommandeditortextcliunixoriginal

Problem

How to use the ed command: The original Unix text editor. See also: awk, sed. More information: <https://www.gnu.org/software/ed/manual/ed_manual.html>.

Solution

ed — The original Unix text editor. See also: awk, sed. More information: <https://www.gnu.org/software/ed/manual/ed_manual.html>.

Start an interactive editor session with an empty document:

ed

Start an interactive editor session with an empty document and a specific prompt:

ed {{[-p|--prompt]}} '{{> }}'

Start an interactive editor session with user-friendly errors:

ed {{[-v|--verbose]}}

Start an interactive editor session with an empty document and without diagnostics, byte counts and '!' prompt:

ed {{[-q|--quiet]}} {{[-s|--script]}}

Start an interactive editor session without exit status change when command fails:

ed {{[-l|--loose-exit-status]}}

Edit a specific file (this shows the byte count of the loaded file):

ed {{path/to/file}}

[Interactive] Replace a string with a specific replacement for all lines:

,s/{{regex}}/{{replacement}}/g

[Interactive] Exit ed:

Code Snippets

Start an interactive editor session with an empty document

ed

Start an interactive editor session with an empty document and a specific prompt

ed {{[-p|--prompt]}} '{{> }}'

Start an interactive editor session with user-friendly errors

ed {{[-v|--verbose]}}

Start an interactive editor session with an empty document and without diagnostics, byte counts and '!' prompt

ed {{[-q|--quiet]}} {{[-s|--script]}}

Start an interactive editor session without exit status change when command fails

ed {{[-l|--loose-exit-status]}}

Context

tldr-pages: common/ed

Revisions (0)

No revisions yet.