Ed Is The Standard Text Editor For Unix/Linux

Anytime someone mentions any text editor (like Vi/m, Emacs, Nano, etc.), someone will make the joke that "ed is the standard editor." While it's a joke, 'ed' actually was the standard text editor for Unix in the early days of Unix. And while 'ed' has largely been supplanted with editors like Vi/m and Emacs, it is still worthwhile to know the basics of the original text editor for Unix-like operating systems.
REFERENCED:
► www.gnu.org/software/ed/manua... - The Ed Manual
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[@SimGunther]

Distrotube is _the_ standard linux KZbin channel

[@zasbirrahmanzayan8648]

@Addison Brendtro i think they do

[@PhilipHarwell]

An elegant piece of software, for a more civilized age.

[@generalkenobi7690]

Hello there

[@feschber]

@@generalkenobi7690 nice

[@AndersJackson]

You has never worked with just a printer and keyboard, have you? It was not that civilized.

[@tiberiusmagnificuscaeser4929]

I unironically used ed as my primary text editor for a bit. I liked it. It works well if you’re willing to work with it

[@rednight2476]

The real vi shares it's code base with ed. Out of ed came sed, because people where using redirection to script ed so they made an easier way to do that. Also came as you pointed out grep. Then the Berekeley guys made an extended version of ed called ex, whic adds a lot of convenience functions. Then the visual mode was added to ex. This is vi. You can actually switch vi to ex mode and ex to vi mode. vi will also start in ex mode if your TERM variable is not set. If you redirect your std output to some sort of line printer(e.g. a thrift shop dot matrix) suddenly line editors make a whole lot of sense.

[@Jorge-xf9gs]

Interesting way to use STDs.

[@LabiaLicker]

sounds like bloat if you ask me

[@gordonbai5320]

Wow this video is too good, I can't wait to learn how to use ed so I can be a boomer, which means sage in the world of unix

[@SamuTheFrog]

Underrated comment

[@lorensims4846]

Most of UNIX was actually written in ed. It's a perfectly capable text editor for almost anything you want to do. It just doesn't have all the bells and whistles we've all become used to, but it really does get the job done.

[@AndersJackson]

That was because of back then you didn't have fancy graphical editors, like Emacs, or note even fancy full screen editors like Emacs and vi. You was basically just editing with a keyboard and a printer, no screen.

[@DV-ml4fm]

Ed is OK for writing small text files. I wouldn't use it for writing many lines of code.

[@lorensims4846]

@@DV-ml4fm “small files”?! Unix as well as most of its first utility programs was written with it. ed is fine for any writing you want to do. You just have to pay a little more attention to what you’re actually doing than in other more fully featured (dare I say “bloated”) text editors.

[@vaisakhkm783]

@@lorensims4846 We can write anything with ed... like people used punch cards for calculation... it's just, 1000X harder, but if no other option, i would use it..

[@tommylee2k]

and you get get nearly everywhere you want by just walking. Still I wouldn't recommend walking from LA to New York

[@mke7605]

Using ed is for the real masochist. I would love a video about rcs as well.

[@robfielding8566]

i found a real use for it. I am learning braille. I can't get out of vim from the braille terminal, because it uses an 8-dot keyboard. It's the closest thing to a text editor that works well with braille. (vim kind of works with a qwerty keyboard.). As for characters costing money.... A braille terminal is usually about 40 cells. $30/cell at least. $600 for a 20 char term $1400 for a 40 char term $16000 for an 80 char term (!)

[@0x007A]

ed is a line-oriented text editor while vim is a screen-oriented text editor.

[@PauloConstantino167]

or you could say Vim is a Lines-oriented editor xD

[@supermasterfighter]

@@PauloConstantino167 no it’s definitely screen oriented, you can actually edit multiple files at once with vim

[@0x007A]

My introduction to *nix ed was Microsoft DOS 2.x edlin (aka edit line), a line editor. The first time I used *nix ed was autumn 1992.

[@scality4309]

Yeah, they ripped it and let us believe ot was original.

[@PenguinEye]

Actually it's pronounced "e d", not ed ;) And between ed and vim there was ex. Great video!

[@urugulu1656]

jep you find out the heritage of vi/vim being something with ex by typing Q (capital q). it will literally tell you that you can enter EX commands now.

[@KarlMySuitcase]

It's because working in it gives erectile dysfunction.

[@DavidLindes]

Indeed. I've heard Brian Kernighan say this (that it's pronounced "e d"), and... I'll trust that source for this topic. :) (That said, I always assumed it was pronounced like "Ed", so it took me a moment to even notice this!)

[@chrkrngl]

it is pronounced "e d", because it predecessor was the QED text editor. Or at least that's where the naming derived from. QED > ed. Or like with BCPL > B > C. I like this Unix naming stuff so much and all the stories behind it. Check out all the Brian Kernighan videos on youtube. PS: And QED is a play on the Latin phrase Q.E.D. "Quod erat demonstrandum", "which was to be demonstrated".

[@vukanoa]

@@chrkrngl Woooow that is so cool! I've recently started reading through Unix history and naming etc. This is SO cool. Thank you!

[@svenkarlsen2702]

This video would have been insanely helpful for me back in the early 1990s.... ed was included with the OS install on my Amiga

[@auroradraco9974]

Ed>Emacs+Vim as it is evident by this video 😂

[@chrissaltmarsh6777]

Thanks for the memories. Try editing code using a 110 baud ASCII teletype - you find out why ed is terse. Then came ex, and vi, and vim, and neovim - I'm on the latter now but no longer at 110 baud. Anyway, at my age I couldn't remember what's going on any more. An essential when using that kit, but better than patching your paper tape with a stick and some glue.

[@bahathir_]

THanks for the video, andd GNU ed is my current main text editor. :)

[@enderger5308]

To note: Ex (and by extension Vi) are part of POSIX, so any compliant system has them.

[@jerryblum7510]

The history of the program helps me understand it better. Thanks

[@simonjesusbeliever3467]

I love ed. Thanks for making a video about it.

[@metalpunk]

Nice, easy-to-follow demo. Thanks!

[@GarethField]

You wouldn’t believe the timing of this in my life, thanks!

[@bl_nkspac_9650]

now i'm interested

[@davidr2421]

Have you just finished building a time machine?

[@TangoIndiaMike144]

The internet requires you to elaborate on your original comment ;)

[@avsbq]

​@@TangoIndiaMike144i agree!

[@MatthewBardsleyMK]

ed is great. Rob Pike's acme and sam are great developments on it that use three-click mouse chording; they are a bit more serious and certainly worth a try (apparently Dennis Ritchie was among frequent users of acme)

[@PauloConstantino167]

are they open source?

[@MatthewBardsleyMK]

@@PauloConstantino167 Absolutely!

[@AndersJackson]

@@PauloConstantino167 wily(1) is the Open source POSIX (Linux) version of acme(1). Quite nice actually. There are also the shell rc(1) that is an implementation of the shell from the "Plan 9" OS too. (Name from the movie "Plan 9 from Outer Space", a must see. Notice it can't be unseen)

[@FishKungfu]

Thank for taking time to make this video, it was great!

[@jrlepage]

Audio sounding really nice and crisp on this video. For me at least. 👍

[@replikvltyoutube3727]

DT did you know ed is one of editors that can work with files as bit as gigabytes (or more) in size. Ither editors, including vim would have shat themselves:)

[@killertigergaming6762]

The question is why would you have a file that is a gigabyte long

[@madandu]

Thanks, it's well thought, well made. Some of ed cmds are common with vi, in-fact learned new ones to use vi.

[@nevoyu]

I used to use ed to write COBOL to interface with the CNC machines at work.

[@deliriumcode]

I'm aware we are in 2021 but I didn't blink during those 20 minutes! Such interesting content, I've enjoyed.

[@CG-tb5uc]

In my early ventures with Unix running on, larger than pc's, AT&T computers in the mid-80's, we used to refer to the editor by it's two letters, 'eee dee' instead of 'aid' as in 'said'... Just like the v i editor ... Just a note... 🙂

[@first-thoughtgiver-of-will2456]

This with something like c tags and custom bash commands (in my language of choice which is rust) for text search and display and manipulation makes a lot of sense. I can write my own templating and macros and have a "regex first" style of editing, all of which are best practices for programming.

[@champfisk5613]

Nice I stumbles across this a couple months ago. It's good for quick notes

[@nickrees4706]

Very clear explanation at a nice speed

[@mortenlund1418]

This was so informative - learning Vim, this video should be mandatory

[@AndersJackson]

Actually, vi is just a full screen fronted in front of ed(1). So it didn't change much when it comes to commands in vi(1). It is the same as in ed(1). In contrary to emacs(1), which used the modern use of the Control key and full screen editing from the beginning. Yes, back then some terminal didn't even had "a", just "A".

[@timchase7726]

FWIW, the g/ command defaults to using the whole file as the range, so you don't have to specify "1,$g/…/…" or ",g/…/…" allowing you to just do "g/…/…" (unless you only want to do the g/ on a sub-range of the file-lines like "3,10g/…/…") Also, ed remembers your last search, so you can search again with just /⏎ (and that last search also gets (re)used if you do a s// or g// command without specifying the pattern.

[@jesusmgw]

Now that you did this, I would love if you track down and try the original Vi editor for Unix systems. I don't even know if it is possible.

[@gimcrack555]

I always like ne(nice editor). Maybe someday do a video on this great text editor. Linux Voice has rated ne as the third best editor for Linux.

[@vmisev]

Finally! Thanks DT :)

[@mayhoth]

RE-Search in ed is not so cumbersome as you put it: If you read the texinfo manual of ed closely, you find that an empty RE defaults to the last RE processed. So, in order to find subsequent or preceding matches of the last RE, you just type / or ? and hit ENTER. And one other thing: You can set a label with [linenumber]kc, where 'c' is any lower case letter you can think of: This label gets attached permanently to the addressed line and continues to be attached to it even when the line is moved around. Hitting 'c now gets you back to referenced line. So, suppose you put the label m to the first line of a paragraph, the address 'c;/^$/ now references the whole paragraph up and including the next blank line. So, e.g. 'c;/^$/0 or 'c;/^$/$ moves this paragraph to the begin or the end of the buffer, respectively.

[@AdrianoViana87]

Great explanation 🎉

[@AlexEscalante]

Well, with all the love "focused" and "distraction free" editors seem to receive these days… I would say ed predates them all!

[@andreasklindt7144]

Maybe you wouldn't write a novel with it, but maybe a first draft. Some tools for writers have some kind of a draft mode or typewriter mode, where you can enter your text but you can't edit it. The idea is to get your thoughts out of your brain before you distract yourself with editing typos, microengineering phrases and beautifying paragraphs. 'ed' could be used for those kind of drafts, since the moment you hit 'enter' (or 'return' as it was called back in 'ed''s glory days) you can't immediatly change that line anymore. Not sure if I would actually use it like this... Does 'ed' has some kind of autosave or buffer that can be recoverd in case of a crash?

[@frechjo]

You could try running Vim in Ex mode, which is pretty similar to Ed, and try configuring it to do all of that. I might be mistaken, but I think it's possible to give Vim specific configuration for the Ex mode. Usually, if you type _ex_ you get a Vim in Ex mode in most Linux distros. If you don't, I think it's just a matter of creating a simlink (Vim reads the name with which it was called from the command line, to know in what mode to start).

[@maithilijsk7698]

The top shadow of the animation is great

[@michalski9141]

never heard of command line text editors before, it actually makes a lot of sense

[@toby3084]

a acme video would be awesome

[@lorensims4846]

Oh, and it's actually pronounced E D, much as how ex and vi are. You don't need to quit and restart ed to get a "prompt." A capital P command will work the same way as that -p argument at the command line.

[@urugulu1656]

but can you do // as in re-search the last thing that has been searched?

[@sodiboo]

3:50 is that copilot in your terminal or something?

[@jamesdecross1035]

Interesting, thanks for this.

[@glensmith491]

Thanks for the nightmare fuel! First editor I used and probably the real genesis of my hatred for most keyboard binds.

[@benj6964]

next step is ex ! which introduced vi as its visual mode, if I'm not mistaken

[@sarathirk4871]

Hi DT, it's really great video, Can you make video on Liquorix and Xanmod Kernel vs Generic Linux Kernel..

[@lorensims4846]

// will repeat your previous search.

[@laarags]

Thanks for sharing.Good stuff👍. If use script cmd before using ed or vi . Yu'll have a typescipt log file. If yu print it in a paper. Yu'll understand why they use ed in the60s.

[@hosseines276]

wow! finally ed!!

[@sawilliams]

ed was the only text editor back in the day if you were coding. There was a dos version also.

[@metalfiregametime652]

As of this message I'll be putting another hard drive into my computer to install Linux onto it. I'll be doing a dual boot :)

[@zentree9932]

someone should make a supercut of the .5 seconds dt is just sitting there at the start lol

[@scifregizmoguy]

19:18 "You cou- you would never write a novel, inside ed, right?" Challenge accepted.

[@evildragon1774]

*softly* Don't

[@yashvanderbamel]

Hey how do you configure autocomplete suggestions with terminal?

[@0x007A]

In *nix environments, the exclamation point (!) is historically called bang and the sharp symbol (#) is historically called pound, not hash or hashtag.

[@spagootest2185]

Pound causes confusion with £.

[@halfsourlizard9319]

It's certainly from another time, but a lot of the fundamental ideas for Vi are there ... just in a clunkier form working within the technical limitations of that time. This makes old videos I've seen of people banging away at a Teletype make waaay more sense.

[@Neucher]

Is there a distro that doesn't have vi or vim pre installed ?

[@darthrevan501st]

I’m not sure possibly Gentoo?

[@Neucher]

@@darthrevan501st Gentoo comes with vi at least on the live cd

[@DistroTube]

Gentoo actually includes vi AND emacs on the live cd. Not even kidding.

[@grzegorzklimek6023]

Ubuntu doesn't have vim preinstalled

[@darthrevan501st]

@@grzegorzklimek6023 but I’m 99% sure(because I haven’t actually checked) it has vi

[@agushex]

To be honest I haven't a Unix system without Vi but... hey good to know actually, at work with have some HP-UX and AIX, and minimal AIX for vios and they all have vi... but now I know what to do if there isn't

[@driden1987]

Ohh I need to learn a new editor !! =]

[@mortezafarshchi8003]

Now I noticed the roots of "sed" & "grep". ;,,,,) it was great!!! and so easy! if you already know how to use grep, sed and vi, using ed would be a piece of cake.

[@ivorjawa]

I never needed Ed, because when I was sysadminning 25 years ago, everything had vi. But I learned vi because it was everywhere, not because I like it.

[@H_cked]

i have to start taking this distro tube channel very very seriously. i tried to install an update for windows 11 on my unsupported laptop, just like last time i wasn't expecting any errors , i expected it to go smooth, bypassed the tpm thing with appraiseres.dll exploit and then when it was installing, and saying getting things ready, blue screen of death error, i thought this would brick my freaking computer. microsoft really want me to move to linux badly huh? am going to have to learn to work a teminal now and understand linux file extensions, i can't keep doing this anymore, having to download 3gb every week, and this is the thanks i get .people here don't know what it's like being betrayed by a company you expected would take care of you it's not a good feeling. it's like that moment when you are st*bbed in the heart by someone and you begin to feel cold as the life drains from you, just the shock, i thought jail breaking windows 11 was something that could last forever, but i woke up to the harsh reality and need to find alternatives. am really really in shock

[@avsbq]

what are you running now

[@mohammedzeglam6811]

Hi dt the last month i discover the fg command with vim and i do not understand that unix command very will can be video about it

[@beardedchimp]

Emacs is the standard operating system, it also has a text editor. Bill Joy is the standard God, who also created a text editor.

[@rbtmdl]

I've had to use edlin way back when.

[@thetriumphsprint]

According to Brian Kernighan, it's not Ed but rather E. D. 🙂

[@ShaunakHub]

Reminds me of edlin 😁

[@coffeedude]

What about EX?

[@avsbq]

8:48 distro tube needs to pee

[@tomy7424]

and here I was watching Ed Edd n Eddy before coming to this

[@jayst]

Try the sam editor

[@Sinthoras155]

I am here because someone made a RISC-V emulator in scratch with a barebones linux on it ed is the only texteditor available

[@PauloConstantino167]

NOW we're talking!

[@TangoIndiaMike144]

Oh god, I nearly got stuck in "ed".It's "Q" to quit if anyone is wondering.

[@6500s1]

better just open up a new terminal, type xkill and then just kill both terminals :DDD

[@0x007A]

Where do you think vim's "you can checkout but you can never leave" inspiration originated?

[@StrikerEureka85]

i reboot

[@0x007A]

@@StrikerEureka85 you must be a Microsoft Windows administrator.

[@rodney_d]

Just unplug the computer

[@ahscott2001]

And now that we've all watched this video, let's say it together: "Vim is for noobs."

[@DevvratSingh007]

ed be on that zigma grindset

[@lorensims4846]

ex was the new, improved ed and then vi was built on top of ex, which is, I assume, why you chose a colon for a prompt, to remind you of dropping to ex within vi.

[@andresdandrea5259]

Who said I was making a joke?

[@egg5474]

*No, this is Patrick*

[@andylees8939]

The original vi was a layer on top of ed. The vi : commands invoked the underlying ed engine.

[@harishkalva6237]

ED is not available in windows wsl

[@philtoa334]

👍

[@scality4309]

Edlin is just a rippoff on dos.

[@torsten.breswald]

it's pronounced E D , not ed watch interesting video 'Where GREP Came From - Computerphile' where Professor Brian Kernighan explains it alongside

[@motherboardbroken2305]

people say nano is for starters, or its easy and meant for beginners. i dont see it, at the get go, i used vim because i followed a video. once i read all the bindings, its so fast and so decisive on its commands (like illustrative i mean, it has ever scenario figured), i found nano's interface and commands so confusing. so much so infact that i just installed vim ( i was distro-hoping, hibernation sucks at pop os) and edited. one thing vim can do is have at least a overlay of commands to get started. btw it was distro-tube who made me see the light, i found vim.

[@semikolondev]

I’m still scared to make the move but I getting more and more annoyed by other ide. One day I’ll do it I’m sure x)

[@ecavero1]

@@semikolondev I made the move two years ago! I mean, I knew what vim (and linux) was since 2009, at least, but since Oct. 2019, I was on a project and had to use my personal laptop. It only had Ubuntu and 5.6GB of RAM. I only could only tolerate one or maybe a couple of instances of my Java webapp to run, so I had to use a light text editor. This was the opportunity I had to force myself in learning Vim. I haven't looked back ever since. Today, I am kind of forced to use IntelliJ only because of a proprietary plugin, but even there, I use Vim motions!

[@aqueuse]

fascinating, quit slow but very fun !

[@michaelsoutherland3023]

I was researching, Erectile Dysfunction.

[@NitroNilz]

Also Eating Disorder

[@jackkeifer]

From the 60's! Ed's father was a horse... Mr. Ed.

[@world-insumary7884]

First ed user

[@egg5474]

VAX11/750 user spotted

[@macbaryum]

Emacs!!!

[@lohanguedes6413]

vi is the true one.

[@yuke...]

ok

[@dagda825]

Now Luke is going to start trashing vim in favor of ed because ed sucks less

[@zilog1]

ed is really cool, but ill stick to vim

[@afborro]

I see a trend developing, what ancient relics will DT cover next that no one uses any more. Why not go back to using the old Amdahl from the eighties, at least that would offer some sentimental value to me. Even that had more sophisticated editors than ed. Hey, I even remember punch cards, although I am not that old to say they were in active use any more, but they were still lying around the labs everywhere. I had to go to the computer center to submit my jobs, and end up walking back with a big roll of paper of output, but no ed thankfully.