commit 8eb8874002454c8638e26bd3bca9eaa174c2ef54
parent 1b69fbdce80f4ee2d46be63be34b4cfb4e4e11d7
Author: Sebastiano Tronto <sebastiano@tronto.net>
Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2022 13:08:45 +0100
Added blog post
Diffstat:
3 files changed, 429 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
diff --git a/src/blog/2022-12-24-ed/ed.md b/src/blog/2022-12-24-ed/ed.md
@@ -0,0 +1,421 @@
+# The man page reading club: ed(1)
+
+I enjoyed writing a little introduction at the beginning of every
+post of this series, but I am running out of ideas. I am not much
+of fiction writer. I'll skip this time, maybe I'll get back to doing
+it in the future.
+
+For this episode I chose to explore ed,
+[the standard editor](https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.en.html).
+This little piece of software first appeared in the very first
+version of UNIX, in the late '60s. Back then, the most common way
+to interact with a computer was via a
+[teletype](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleprinter). This meant
+that, in order to edit a file, you could not simply show a screenful
+of text and modify it interactively.
+
+As we will see in this post, the way you modify your text files
+with ed is by running commands, as you would in your usual
+[shell](../2022-09-13-sh-1). You might wonder why in the world you
+should be interested in using this over a more human-friendly text
+editor. There are at least a couple of reasons:
+
+1. You find yourself in a very limited environment (e.g. some ebedded
+ OS) where ed is the only editor available.
+2. You want to edit a text file as part of a shell script - you can
+ find an example in my [last blog entry](../2022-11-23-git-host).
+
+## ed(1)
+
+*Follow along at
+[man.openbsd.org](http://man.openbsd.org/OpenBSD-7.2/ed)*
+
+The first section explains a few fundamental things.
+
+First of all, ed can be invoked with a file as an argument. The
+given file is copied into a *buffer*, and changes are written to
+it only when the user issues a `w` command.
+
+ed reads every line the user inputs and tries to interpret it as a
+command. The general form for an ed command is
+
+```
+ [address[,address]]command[parameters]
+```
+
+Where the (optional) addresses specify a range of lines over which
+the command has to operate. See the **Line addressing** section
+below for more info.
+
+Some commands allow you to switch to *input mode*, where ed reads
+text without trying to interpret it as a command - usually for the
+purpose of inserting it in your file - until a line with a single
+dot `.` character is read.
+
+There are only two command line options for ed: `-s` to suppress
+diagnostic messages and `-p prompt` to specify a prompt string for
+its command line.
+
+### Line addressing
+
+Every command operates on one or more lines. The default is the
+*current line*, which is usually set to be the last line affected
+by the last command. For example, after opening a file, the current
+line is set to its last line.
+
+You can specify the line(s) on which a command shall operate by
+prepending one or two *addresses* separated by a comma or a semicolon.
+The difference is the following:
+
+```
+ Each address in a comma-delimited range is interpreted relative to the
+ current address. In a semi-colon-delimited range, the first address is
+ used to set the current address, and the second address is interpreted
+ relative to the first.
+```
+
+For example, let's say you are on line 3. Then the address range
+`5,+4` selects the lines from 5 to 7 (3+4), while `5;+4` selects 5
+to 9 (5+4).
+
+But what is a valid address, actually? Besides simply specifying a
+line number, there are a variety of ways to address line: For
+example, `.` refers to the current line and `$` to the last line
+of the file. As we have seen, you can also specify relative addresses
+in the form `-n` or `+n`. You can also search for a line containing
+a specific patern:
+
+```
+ /re/ The next line containing the regular expression re. The search
+ wraps to the beginning of the buffer and continues down to the
+ current line, if necessary. The second slash can be omitted if
+ it ends a line. "//" repeats the last search.
+```
+
+For more infor about regular expressions, see
+[re_format(7)](http://man.openbsd.org/re_format)
+(or perhaps my next blog entry?). Using question marks instead of
+slashes (like this: `?re?`) searches backwards.
+
+### Commands
+
+ed offers a lot of commands to manipulate text. If you are familiar
+with other UNIX editors such as vi or sed, you may recognize many
+of them.
+
+As usual, they are listed in alphabetic order in the manual page,
+so I took the liberty of re-arranging them into groups. I'll have to
+skip or just briefly mention some of them, otherwise I might just
+as well copy the whole manual page here.
+
+**Address-only commands**
+
+Specifying an address only, without a command, changes the current
+line to the (last) addressed line and it prints it. The default is
+the next line, i.e. if you just press enter ed prints out the next
+line and sets it as the current line.
+
+**Printing lines**
+
+The command `p` prints the addressed line. The command `n` does the
+same, but it also prints line numbers. `l` is the same as `p`, but
+special characters (e.g. new lines) are made visible.
+
+Most commands accept a *print suffix* `p`, `l` or `n` that instructs
+ed to print the last line affected by the command. Thus, the three
+printing commands can be also seen as an *address-only command*
+followed by a print suffix.
+
+**Basic editing**
+
+The commands `a` and `i` toggle *input mode* to let you insert text
+after (**a**ppend) or before (**i**nsert) the last line addressed.
+Usually you want to address a single line, often the current line,
+when using one of these commands.
+
+The commands `d` and `c` can be used to **d**elete or **c**hange
+the addressed lines. The latteris equivalent to `d` followed by an
+`a` command.
+
+**Copying, moving and joining lines.**
+
+The commands `t` and `m` operate on a range and take an extra single
+address (which can be `0`) as a parameter, and copy (**t**ransfer)
+or **m**ove the addressed lines to that location. For example the
+command `2,4t0` will copy the 2nd, 3rd and 4th lines to the beginning
+of the file.
+
+If you want to join multiple lines in one you can use the `j` command.
+
+**Text substitution**
+
+The `s` command is one of the most powerful ed offers, but also one
+of the most complex. It allows you to replace a piece of text, or
+any arbitrary pattern defined by a regular expression, with whatever
+you like.
+
+It comes in three variants:
+
+```
+(.,.)s/pattern/text/
+(.,.)s/pattern/text/g
+(.,.)s/pattern/text/n
+```
+
+Where `pattern` is a regular expression and `text` is simple text.
+The first form replaces only the first occurrence of `pattern` in
+each selected line, while the second replaces every occurrence. In
+the last form, `n` must be a number, and only the n-th occurrence
+is replaced.
+
+There are some special characters that can be used: for example, a
+single `&` in `text` is equivalent to the currently matched text.
+If `text` consists of a single `%`, the `text` argument of the last
+`s` command issued is used.
+
+You may escape any character in `text`, including newlines, by
+prepending a backaslash. To avoid escaping slashes to death, keep
+in mind that you can use any other character, for example a `|`,
+instead of `/` in the `s` command.
+
+Finally, a simple `s` command, without pattern or text, repeats the
+last substitution issued.
+
+Let's put this all together with a single example. We have a file
+that looks like this:
+
+```
+This is the first line
+Another line, called the second line
+/A third line, with boundaries/
+Let's make it four
+```
+
+And run the following ed commands:
+
+```
+1/s/t/T/
+1/s/T/&&/g
+2/s/l/%/
+1,3s
+3s|/|\||g
+```
+
+The result is:
+
+```
+TThis is TThe first lline
+Another llline, called the second line
+|A third lline, with boundaries|
+Let's make it four
+```
+
+Understanding why you get this is left as an exercise for the reader ;-)
+
+**Multiple commands on selected lines**
+
+The commands `g` and `G` are also quite powerful. With
+
+```
+(.,.)g/pattern/command-list
+```
+
+you can specify a list of commands to be executed on every line
+matching the regular expression `pattern`. The commands in the list
+are each on their own line, ended with a backslash. The command `G`
+is essentially an interactive version of `g`. Check the man page
+for more details!
+
+**Marks**
+
+You can mark a line with a single lowercase letter (say x) using
+the command `[address]kx`. What for, you might ask? Well, when
+talking about addresses I omitted to tell you that you can also
+refer to a marked line using `'x`. You only have 26 marks at your
+disposal, and one is only deleted when the line it marks is modified,
+so use them wisely!
+
+**Reading files and commands**
+
+You can use the `r` command to insert the content of a file (with
+`r filename`) or the output of a command (with `r !command`) after
+the current line. This is the same as the `r` command of vi, which
+I have discussed in a [previous blog entry](../2022-09-05-man-col).
+
+**Undo**
+
+Use the `u` command to undo the last command. Using `u` twice
+undoes the undo. No editing history for you, sorry.
+
+**File management**
+
+From inside ed, you can use `e filename` to open a new file (**e**dit),
+`w` to save your changes to the current file (**w**rite) and `q`
+to quit. These commands have an upper-case variant (`E`, `W`, and
+`Q`) that can be used to ignore errors (e.g. quit without saving).
+
+The command `wq` can be used as a shortcut for saving and closing.
+
+### ?
+
+ed is infamously terse with its error messages. Indeed, whatever
+error you make, you are going to be faced with the following
+informative line:
+
+```
+ ?
+```
+
+But don't worry: the command `h` shows a more verbose description
+of the last error. You can use the `H` command to toggle verbose
+error messages for the whole session.
+
+## An example session
+
+Let's write an *Hello world* text file using ed!
+
+Let's start by calling ed with a reasonable prompt, to make our
+life easier.
+
+```
+$ ed -p 'ed > ' hellow.txt
+```
+
+And let's open a (new) file:
+
+```
+ed > e hellow.txt
+```
+
+Don't worry about the (unusually verbose!) error message. The file
+does not exist yet, but it will be created when we save our work
+with `w`. Now let's add a line of text:
+
+```
+ed > a
+Hello, wolrd!
+wq
+
+```
+
+Wait, why is ed still open? And why is it not showing the `ed > `
+prompt? Oh right, we forgot to end the input mode by entering a
+single dot!
+
+```
+.
+ed >
+```
+
+Ok, now we are back in business. But we have to remove the `wq`
+line we entered by mistake:
+
+```
+ed > /wq/d
+```
+
+Let's check that we have written what we intended to by printing
+the content of the file:
+
+```
+ed > 1,$n
+1 Hello, wolrd!
+```
+
+Oh no, there is a typo! No big deal, we can fix it:
+
+```
+ed > 1s/lr/rl/
+```
+
+And now that we are done, we can close our file:
+
+```
+ed > q
+?
+```
+
+Wait, what's going on? Let's check:
+
+```
+ed > h
+warning: file modified
+```
+
+Oh right, we need to save.
+
+```
+ed > wq
+```
+
+And now we are done!
+
+## I/O redirection magic
+
+As all other basic UNIX utilities, ed can be used non-interactively
+by using input / output redirection. As an example, consider the
+interactive session above. The input we fed to ed was:
+
+```
+e hellow.txt
+a
+Hello, wolrd!
+wq
+.
+/wq/d
+1,$n
+1s/lr/rl/
+q
+h
+wq
+```
+
+If we save (a stripped down version of) the text above in a file
+called `edcommands.txt`
+
+```
+a
+Hello, wolrd!
+wq
+.
+/wq/d
+1s/lr/rl/
+wq
+```
+
+and run
+
+```
+$ ed -s hellow2.txt < edcommands.txt
+```
+
+We should obtain a file `hellow2.txt` identical to `hellow.txt`. I
+say "should" because apparently there is a little caveat: when used
+non-interactively, ed exits on the first error it encounters. This
+also happens with the `No such file or directory` error that we get
+at the beginning, if a file `hellow2.txt` does not exist yet. We
+just have to create one in advance, for example with `touch
+hellow2.txt`, and run again the ed command above.
+
+## Conclusions
+
+ed was designed in a time when the computer-human interaction was
+a bit different from now, and it shows. However, its language is
+pleasantly consistent: every action you want to perform is expressed
+in the address-command-parameters form. This makes it easy to learn
+and boring, which is a good thing. Such consistency is much harder
+to achieve in the 2D graphical world - which includes
+[TUIs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text-based_user_interface).
+
+At the beginning of the post I have mentioned two use cases for a
+software like ed in the present day: being forced into a limited
+environment and using it in non-interactive mode. But there is at
+least another one: for visually impaired users, modern computer
+interfaces are largely inaccessible, as they can't look at a wall
+of text and pictures to figure out where the stuff they want to
+work on is. On the other hand, an editor like ed does not overwhelm
+users with visual output and does not require them to keep in mind
+more than one line at the time. If you are interest in this topic
+I highly suggest reading the article
+[The command line philosophy](http://www.eklhad.net/philosophy.html)
+by Karl Dahlke, the author of [edbrowse](https://edbrowse.org).
diff --git a/src/blog/blog.md b/src/blog/blog.md
@@ -2,6 +2,7 @@
[RSS Feed](feed.xml)
+* 2022-12-24 [The man page reading club: ed(1)](2022-12-24-ed)
* 2022-11-23 [Self-hosted git pages with stagit (featuring ed, the standard editor)](2022-11-23-git-host)
* 2022-10-19 [Keeping my email sorted (the hard way)](2022-10-19-email-setup)
* 2022-10-01 [The man page reading club: tetris(6)](2022-10-01-tetris)
diff --git a/src/blog/feed.xml b/src/blog/feed.xml
@@ -9,6 +9,13 @@ Thoughts about software, computers and whatever I feel like sharing
</description>
<item>
+<title>The man page reading club: ed(1)</title>
+<link>https://sebastiano.tronto.net/blog/2022-12-24-ed</link>
+<description>The man page reading club: ed(1)</description>
+<pubDate>2022-12-24</pubDate>
+</item>
+
+<item>
<title>Self-hosted git pages with stagit (featuring ed, the standard editor)</title>
<link>https://sebastiano.tronto.net/blog/2022-11-23-git-host</link>
<description>Self-hosted git pages with stagit (featuring ed, the standard editor)</description>
