ed

Line editor

low risk

interactive breakdown — edit the command and press Explain

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⚠ Risks & cautions

Edits in place with no backup — copy the file first.

What it does

Classic line editor; useful in scripts for in-place edits. `ed` commands are read from stdin.

Examples

printf '%s\n' ',s/old/new/g' w q | ed -s fileReplace text in a file · explain & risk-check →

Related

Open the full explainer →More in Text Processing

Reference text is hand-written and may be incomplete — check man ed for your version. Test destructive commands on a non-production system first.