Ed Still Saves My Bacon

Posted: May 09, 2020

Ed isn't my daily editor, but I can use it to edit in a pinch. And more often than is probably reasonable, I find myself in a pinch.

Recently, I was bringing up a new system with only a single serial terminal. Normally, vi will work over serial connection with a reasonable baud rate, but this system featured a particularly weak shell that doesn't support clear.

Ed! Save me! Ed works anywhere you can run a terminal. I was able to make my edits, bring the system completely online, and set up a normal development workflow.

Learn ed! It can be useful, it's a walk down editor history, and you'll learn how to use one of the most powerful command line tools along the way: sed.

And if you want to enjoy a bit of modern ed humor, follow ed(1)Conference on Twitter!

Note: This blog post is part of #100DaysToOffload.