GNU ed

GNU ed is an open source command-line text editor that can be used to create, display, modify and manipulate text files.

GNU ed supports editing of text files via shell scripts or interactively.

What is new in this release:

• The testsuite no longer feeds shell scripts to ed.
• The "configure" script now accepts options with a separate argument.

What is new in version 1.8:

• No user-visible changes were made.
• Ed now stops reading stdin when reaching the real End Of File the first time.
• Previously it needed to reach EOF twice.

What is new in version 1.7:

• Shows the "Try 'ed --help' for more information." message if a bad option is given on the command line.
• Quote characters in messages have been changed as advised by GNU Coding Standards.
• The description of address offsets in the manual and a link to the Bash manual have been fixed.
• The configure option "--datadir" has been renamed to "--datarootdir" to follow GNU Standards.
• The target "install-bin" has been added to the Makefile.

What is new in version 1.7 RC1:

• Ed now shows the "Try 'ed --help' for more information." message if a bad option is given in the command line.
• Quote characters in messages have been changed as advised by GNU Coding Standards.
• Configure option "--datadir" has been renamed to "--datarootdir" to follow GNU Standards.

What is new in version 1.6 RC5:

• An error which prevented using NUL characters in regular expressions has been fixed.
• Ed now signals an error if it can't create a shell process when executing a shell command and flushes stdout/stderr before reading a new command.
• The man page is now generated with "help2man".
• All commandline options are now documented in the man page.
• A portability problem on Linux SPARC has been fixed.

What is new in version 1.5:

• The "a", "c" and "i" commands have been fixed. (When used in a global command list, the commands following them in the list were ignored).
• The "e" command has been fixed. (It quitted when invoked a second time with a modified buffer).
• The new option "--restricted" has been added. "red" has been converted to a script invoking "ed --restricted".
• The description of ed in the manual has been changed.
• Obsolete POSIX tests have been removed from the testsuite.

What is new in version 1.5 RC3:

• Some tests have been improved and obsolete POSIX tests have been removed from the test suite.
• A small error in the manual has been fixed.

What is new in version 1.5 RC2:

• The "a", "c" and "i" commands have been fixed. (When used in a global command list, the commands following them in the list were ignored).
• The "e" command has been fixed. (It quit when invoked a second time with a modified buffer).

What is new in version 1.2:

• The man page is now installed by default. "make install-info" should now work on Debian and Mac OS X.
• The license of the manual has been updated to GFDL version 1.3 or later.