

GNU /bin/ed 1.6 released - lelf
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-ed/2012-01/msg00000.html

======
ars
"If you are packaging ed for a distribution, please, try to use the lzipped
source tarball, as this can improve the support for the lzip format in
packaging systems. Thanks."

Great. Now we have .xz, .lzip (.lz) and .lzma. Not to mention .7z - all using
basically the same compression engine, with just enough differences to make
them incompatible with each other.

~~~
moe
_with just enough differences to make them incompatible with each other._

It stopped being funny when tar ran out of letters.

-Z = compress, -z = gzip, -j = bzip2, -J = XZ

Now for lzip they had to resort to --lzip...

~~~
slug
well, with gnu tar I prefer to use:

    
    
      -a, --auto-compress
          use archive suffix to determine the compression program
    

So tar cvfa archive.tar.xz files* would create a tar.xz file

~~~
strager
Doesn't work when piping the file to `tar`, though (e.g. `curl <http://.>. |
tar x`). I've thus gotten in the habit of specifying the format I expect.

~~~
chalst
-a only works when creating the tarball anyway.

`file`-like auto-decompress could work, though: these formats have magic
numbers, and tar already has the data in its zip_magic struct:

<http://svn.netlabs.org/repos/ports/tar/trunk/src/buffer.c>

together with code to infer compression type. I guess the only reason why tar
doesn't support this already is caution.

~~~
LukeShu
-a does work with decompression, what version are you using? I'm using GNU tar 1.26, and just successfully used "tar xaf firefox-9.0.1.source.tar.bz2".

~~~
chalst
If you explicitly provide a file by path, then tar doesn't use magic number
autodetect, but uses file extension dispatch instead. You would need to pass
the data as a stream to force magic number autodetect:

    
    
          <firefox-9.0.1.source.tar.bz2 tar xaf -
    

Does that still work? It doesn't for me.

I was using (GNU tar) 1.20 and Debian stable is now at 1.23, but I think that
autodetect code went in around 1.18.

------
codex
ed: the new hipster editor. Perfect for writing that Haskell to JavaScript
compiler for your Node.js app.

~~~
sgt
Hahaha.

------
pkrumins
I made a `ed` cheat sheet years ago:

[http://www.catonmat.net/download/ed.text.editor.cheat.sheet....](http://www.catonmat.net/download/ed.text.editor.cheat.sheet.pdf)

Remember that vim's ex or command mode (mode when you type ":") accepts `ed`
commands. Level up!

------
mahmud
Meh. Those of us who run _ed-nightly_ have already enjoyed those features
since New Year's Eve. <3 Gentoo.

------
sciurus
<http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed.msg>

~~~
pjscott
This can also be found distributed with Emacs.

[http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git/tree/etc/JOKES?h=...](http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git/tree/etc/JOKES?h=emacs-23)

... Along with a bunch of other jokes, most of them making fun of Emacs. It's
been there since ancient times.

~~~
michaelcampbell
I'm old enough to remember when this was poignant, and true (and when "eight"
was moved to "eighty")...

    
    
        Eight
        Megabytes
        And
        Constantly
        Swapping
    
    

But man how far we've come in so short a time!

------
sgt
I've had to resort to ed a few times to rescue a system with no /usr
partition. 'vi' or 'vim' happened to be in /usr/bin, so I needed to do some
quick editing. Ed is definitely worth learning!

~~~
Natsu
It's always good for systems administrators to be able to do things with one
(or both) hands tied behind their backs. Murphy always seems to conspire to
create a situation where those skills are necessary....

------
sramsay
From the ChangeLog:

"All command-line options are now documented in the man page."

This should clear up any difficulty users may have had using the program.

------
sea6ear
I actually found studying ed (while reading _The Unix Programming Environment_
by Kernighan and Pike) to be really helpful in understanding sed and vim in
more depth.

------
RexRollman
What does "8-bit clean" mean? I've seen that phrase before in regards to Nvi
as well.

~~~
Hemospectrum
If you assume you'll never need the 8th bit of any given character (which you
wouldn't, if you only ever handle pure 7-bit ASCII) you can safely use it for
storing a single bit of per-character metadata to avoid consuming excess
memory.

~~~
dextorious
actually its wxactly the opposite

------
pgroves
"GNU ed is an 8-bit clean, more or less POSIX-compliant implementation of the
standard Unix line editor."

If the main implementation of ed isn't even POSIX compliant these days, I'd
say POSIX is officially pointless.

~~~
lmm
GNU has a long history of ignoring POSIX where they disagree with it. There's
a much better chance that the BSD implementation will be fully compliant.

------
zotz
I use red, not ed. You can't be too careful.

------
pconf
This title is misleading. 'ed' was written long before GNU existed. Should
probably read "GNU revision 1.6 of the Unix' ed command has been released".

~~~
pconf
Sad to see points of fact downmodded, no doubt by GNU fanboys. Wonder if we
should also start calling Emacs' Windows port "Microsoft EMACS"?

