Ed support page

Ed is an iPhone port of the famous unix editor ed.

It was originally written many years ago for use on printing terminals.  It is not WYSIWYG or anything remotely resembling that.

Ed is modal.  To enter text, type a, and hit return.

Then enter your text.  When you done, put a period on a line all by itself.

To see what you have, type:
,p

To save type:

w myfilename

There is a way to see what files you have:
!ls

The bas version of the iPhone port is not the latest version of Ed, which (believe it or not!) is a posix standard.  It is based on a much earlier version which you can read more about here.  Believe it or not, it was used to write most of Unix.  If that surprises you, look at this document, which reveals some of the hidden power of ed.

Obviously there are certain differences between the iPhone version and a full Unix version, most particularly in the ! shell escape command.  The only useful command implemented in the iPhone version of ed is !ls, which will list your files.  To do serious file management, I suggest using iTunes.

If you have any questions feel free to email me, or leave a comment here.

Thank you for looking, and for your five star reviews!