

Version 1.8 of GNU ed released - lelf
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/gnu.announce/2DWsmkhYv5Y

======
sramsay
"* Ed now stops reading stdin when reaching real End Of File the first time.
(Before it needed to reach EOF twice)."

Once? You've gotta be kidding. In older, hardcore versions, ed would BLOW
RIGHT PAST your first EOF. It would say, "So long, sucka!" to your first EOF.
It would assume you weren't serious with that first one, BECAUSE YOU WEREN'T.

What ed was looking for was EOT (end of tape). Because _that_ was serious.
When it saw EOF, it thought, "Oh, for fuck's sake. It's amateur hour." Now ed
is apparently all about "user friendliness."

This is bullshit.

~~~
kps
Made me look. _Real_ ed(1) exits on the first EOF.

[1] <http://www.tuhs.org/> [2] <http://puszcza.gnu.org.ua/software/apout/>

~~~
saurik
(EOT also happens to be the character you use to represent EOF; this was
largely a joke, possibly referencing that "Ed is the real text editor" rant
from decades ago that specifically discussed how difficult it was to exit ed
as one of its many features. I found it funny.)

~~~
kps
Yes, I know it was a joke. I just had to check that my memory wasn't acting
up. (I actually had to use nothing but ed for real work for a few months in
1985 — makes for good training in regular expressions.) Real ed only requires
two EOF (or 'q' commands) if the file has changed, so you don't quit by
accident, but driving it by script won't hang.

------
hosay123
It's worth avoiding linking to Google Groups entirely, on the basis that the
new UI is unusable and that the product will probably be canned soon enough.

GMane is a good community-oriented alternate:

<http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.fsf.announce/1952>

------
zurn
ed is actually really handy in shell scripts when you want change something in
a text file, and want to navigate in the text by following landmarks. Eg. if
you are editing an .ini file the sed or awk methods are much more cumbersome,
with ed it's just a couple of navigation commands and a in-place replace and
save.

Plus you get to try things out interactively and then paste the working set of
commands in your script. it's like sed with a repl, only better!

Example:
[https://groups.google.com/group/comp.unix.shell/msg/e823e275...](https://groups.google.com/group/comp.unix.shell/msg/e823e275906f4079)

~~~
philh
That breaks if the file to include contains a line with just a .,
unfortunately. But it's still ridiculously simple, and that's likely not to be
a problem in a lot of cases.

------
geocar
A while ago I "minimally ported" the V6 ed to modern systems:

* <http://geocar.sdf1.org/ed.c>

* <http://geocar.sdf1.org/ed.c.orig>

I actually prefer ed/ex to screen editors when doing quick fixes because I can
still see what's in the terminal (although I still use both emacs and vi as
well).

~~~
gnuvince
I use a shell inside Emacs, so I just split my frame.

------
asdfs
I found this blog post to be an excellent ingroduction to ed, for the
uninitiated: <http://blog.sanctum.geek.nz/actually-using-ed/>

And of course there's the obligatory: <http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-
msg.txt>

------
jdale27
"Ed is the standard text editor."

~~~
rquantz
Is this what you're referring to?

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5246071>

~~~
jdale27
Yes.

------
Mr_T_
But does it have syntax highlighting?

~~~
EliRivers
It certainly does. On my system, the whole syntax is highlighted a sort of
off-white against a black background.

~~~
piqufoh
I can't get code completion to work :-(

~~~
rufus_t
Once you're done coding, the code will be completed.

That's all there is to it.

------
aeonflux
But does it have multiple cursors?

~~~
mhd
You need 'ex' for that, if you can stand the bloat.

