When comparing ed vs EDITFILE, the Slant community recommends ed for most people. In the question“What are the best programming text editors?” ed is ranked 55th while EDITFILE is ranked 71st.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Tight control over what's displayed, within terminal window
Pro ed is the standard text editor
As the standard text editor, ed
is available on multiple systems.
Pro Consistent UI
ed
has a consistent user interface and error reportage.
Pro Splits EDI X12, EDIFACT, and TRADACOM Files
EDITFILE can split the EDI X12, EDIFACT, and TRADACOM files into each individual messages.
Pro Exports EDI X12, Delimitted Application Files into Excel Spreadsheet
EDITFILE has the feature to export ANSI X12 documents, Delimitted Application Files into CSV.
Cons
Con Obsolete
There's absolutely no need for ed when you have sed and ex.
Con Not a lot of features
While extremely fast and simple, Ed is simply not for programming for a long time because it lacks a lot of important features. It should be used instead for quick edits.
Con Not a persistent UI
You can only view portions of a file through search or regular expression commands. You cannot scan or scroll through a file using the available screen real-estate.
It's not too dissimilar in use to command-line tools (such as grep and sed) for editing a file. In fact, both grep and sed are based on how interaction is performed with Ed.