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Add to SafariWhen comparing ed vs Textpad, the Slant community recommends Textpad for most people. In the question“What are the best programming text editors?” Textpad is ranked 32nd while ed is ranked 55th. The most important reason people chose Textpad is:
Textpad can handle large text files very quickly.
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 Highly efficient
Textpad can handle large text files very quickly.
Pro Fast and features macros
Text Pad is fast and supports macros for easy handling of repetitive tasks.
Pro Large number of syntax highlighting add-ons
It's easy to add a new syntax highlighted language to TextPad.
Pro Search and Replace
Excellent regex functions to manipulate data in large text based (csv, php, etc) files.
Pro Easy to get started, especially for Java
When you require a minimal learning curve and a quick start to writing code, TextPad is one of the best choices. Especially for small Java projects, TextPad is the go-to editor.
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 Macros are not editable
Con No bold/italics
Con Disappointing keyboard shortcuts
The keyboard shortcuts in Textpad are a little dated.
