3 Invoking ed ¶

The format for running ed is:

ed [options] [[+line] file]
red [options] [[+line] file]
ed [options] [[+line] '!command [arguments]']

file specifies the name of a file to read. If file is prefixed with a bang (!), then it is interpreted as a shell command. In this case, what is read is the standard output of file executed via sh. To read a file whose name begins with a bang (or a hyphen), prefix the name with ./. The default filename is set to file only if it is not prefixed with a bang.

The file name may be preceded by ‘+line’ to set the current line to the line number specified. If line exceeds the number of lines in the file, the current line is set to the last line.

The file name may be preceded by ‘+/re’ to set the current line to the first line matching the regular expression re, or by ‘+?re’ to set the current line to the last line matching re. If re does not match any line, ed fails immediately with exit status 1 unless the option -l is specified and standard input is not a regular file.

ed supports the following options: See Syntax of command-line arguments.

-h

--help

Print an informative help message describing the options and exit.

-V

--version

Print the version number of ed on the standard output and exit. This version number should be included in all bug reports.

-E

--extended-regexp

Use extended regular expressions instead of the basic regular expressions mandated by POSIX.

-G

--traditional

Forces backwards compatibility. This affects the behavior of the ed commands ‘G’, ‘V’, ‘f’, ‘l’, ‘m’, ‘t’, and ‘!!’. If the default behavior of these commands does not seem familiar, then try invoking ed with this switch.

-l

--loose-exit-status

Don’t exit with bad status if a command happens to "fail" (for example if a substitution command finds nothing to replace). This can be useful when ed is invoked as the editor for crontab.

-p string

--prompt=string

Specifies a command prompt string and turns prompting on. Showing the prompt string may be toggled on and off with the ‘P’ command.

-q

--quiet

--silent

Suppress diagnostic messages written to standard error.

-r

--restricted

Run in restricted mode. This mode disables editing of files out of the current directory and execution of shell commands.

-s

--script

Suppress the printing of byte counts by ‘e’, ‘E’, ‘r’, ‘w’, and ‘!’ commands, and the ‘!’ prompt after a ‘!’ command. Suppress also the messages "Newline inserted" and "Newline appended". This option does not suppress diagnostic messages written to standard error (see -q above). -s may be useful if ed’s standard input is from a script.

-v

--verbose

Turn help mode on; print a help message explaining the reason for each ‘?’ notification. This may be toggled on and off with the ‘H’ command. Use this option to aid in debugging ed scripts.

--strip-trailing-cr

Strip the carriage returns at the end of text lines in DOS files. CRs are removed only from the CR/LF (carriage return/line feed) pair ending the line. CRs at other positions in the line, including a CR finishing an unterminated line, are not removed. The CRs are not restored when saving the buffer to a file.

--unsafe-names

ed rejects file names containing the control characters ‘\a’, ‘\b’, ‘\t’, ‘\v’, ‘\f’, ‘\r’, ‘\033’, and ‘\177’ unless they are allowed with this option. Newline characters in file names are rejected even if this option is specified.

Exit status: 0 for a normal exit, 1 for environmental problems (invalid command-line options, memory exhausted, command failed, etc), 2 for problems with the input file (file not found, buffer modified, I/O errors), 3 for an internal consistency error (e.g., bug) which caused ed to panic.