It is useful when you have typed some commands, and then want to edit a text file without losing the text. Consider if you are working on text that you will want to copy+paste into a jira/bugzilla ticket as an evidence-of-work. Or if a second person is watching your screen as you work.
It is useful when you are operating over a high-latency connection. As long as you do not send newline by mistake, you can form the command you want to dispatch with confidence. You do not have to worry about where your cursor is, and you won't find yourself in an unexpected mode, or having done the wrong number of undos or redos.
For a while I used it to write C for a hobby-project on the train, using an android phone and screen keyboard. Simple keypresses are easier than control characters in that setting. If you are interacting with a remote unix system from an ipad, you may find it useful for the same reason.
About once a year I find it useful in situations where I have some kind of broken or low-function TTY, or library problems and want to make an edit.
At times, it would be useful to have an ed-like mode available in bash, so that you could have access to an editor when your system was preventing you from spawning new processes.
It is useful when you are operating over a high-latency connection. As long as you do not send newline by mistake, you can form the command you want to dispatch with confidence. You do not have to worry about where your cursor is, and you won't find yourself in an unexpected mode, or having done the wrong number of undos or redos.
For a while I used it to write C for a hobby-project on the train, using an android phone and screen keyboard. Simple keypresses are easier than control characters in that setting. If you are interacting with a remote unix system from an ipad, you may find it useful for the same reason.
About once a year I find it useful in situations where I have some kind of broken or low-function TTY, or library problems and want to make an edit.
At times, it would be useful to have an ed-like mode available in bash, so that you could have access to an editor when your system was preventing you from spawning new processes.