ed Cheat Sheet

ed is a small, powerful, line-oriented, command-line-interfaced text editor. All editors frustrate, but ed often amazes while others disappoint.

ed, man! !man ed — ed is the standard text editor.

man ed for more information.

Start ed from your shell command line:

ed file

Edit file by entering ed commands with the following syntax:

[range][command]

range specifies the line or block of consecutive lines (syntax: from-line,to-line) to which command is applied. Default range is the current line except where noted below with a parenthesis preceding the command syntax. Lines are specified as follows:

n	line n	`.`	current	`$`	last	`'`c	mark c
`-`[n]	up n (default: 1)	`+`[n]	down n (default: 1)	`,`	1,$	`;`	.,$
`?re?`	previous regexp match			`/re/`	next regexp match

Input commands

a Append after. c Change range. i Insert before. . End input mode.

Edit commands

`d`	Delete.	`s/re/s/[g\|n][p]`	Substitute.
`m[line]`	Move after line.	`t[line]`	Copy after line.
`(.,+)j`	Join lines.	`u`	Undo.
`(1,$)g/re/cmds`	Perform cmds for all matching lines.	`(1,$)v/re/cmds`	Perform cmds for all non-matching lines.

File commands

`e [file^*]`	Edit file.	`E [file^*]`	Edit, discarding changes.
`($)r [file]`	Read and append.	`f [file]`	Set/display file name.
`(1,$)w [file^*]`	Write.	`(1,$)W [file^*]`	Append to file.
`(1,$)wq [file^*]`	Write and quit.

^*	In place of file, specify "`!`shell-command" to read/write text to shell-command standard output/input.

Display commands

`p`	List lines.	`l`	… with unprintables.	`n`	… with numbers.
`(+)z[lines]`	Scroll.	`(+)null`	`p`

Other commands

`kc`	Mark line.	`($)=`	Display line number.	`h`	Last error text.
`!shell-command`	Execute shell-command.	`q`	Quit.	`Q`	Quit, discarding changes.

$Id: ed.html,v 1.5 2007/10/09 00:27:11 papa Exp $