ed Cheat Sheet

ed:

ed is a small, powerful, line-oriented, command-line-interfaced text editor. All editors frustrate, but ed often amazes while others disappoint.
“If something goes wrong, ed is sometimes the only editor available. This is often the only time when it is used interactively.” – from its Wikipedia entry
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.

ed Cheat Sheet - traditional link (using RCS)

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