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Add to SafariWhen comparing ed vs EmEditor, the Slant community recommends ed for most people. In the question“What are the best programming text editors?” ed is ranked 55th while EmEditor is ranked 72nd.
Specs
Question 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 Excellent file compare functionality
Comparing files is intuitive and works well.
Pro Very good at handling (large) CSV files
Quickly opens even very large CSVs and converts data to columns according to delimiter. Fast Search/Replace operations.
Pro Opens very large files very fast
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.
Con Windows-only
Con Default themes and syntax coloring not the prettiest
Some syntax highlighting colors and/or themes don't look very good - but can be customised.
