ed text editor
Hacker ApprovedRanked 19 of 56 text editors by recommenders
A tiny, line-based Unix text editor that is light on resources and handy for quick or batch edits, though critics find it dated and awkward to use.
A tiny, line-based Unix text editor that is light on resources and handy for quick or batch edits, though critics find it dated and awkward to use.
26 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 21
- criticize it
- 5
- approval share
- 81%
Recommended in 10 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 21 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 4.2 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 10 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Line-based batch edits, no cursor
“Line-based instead of having to manage cursor movements.”
Comment from 12 Feb 2026 in “Improving 15 LLMs at Coding in One Afternoon. Only the Harness Changed” “You can do a gazillion edits with it in one shot.”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Astra for Coding: Why Are We Doing This Again?” Standard and sparing with tokens
“It is surprisingly sparing on tokens, which makes sense since those things were designed to work with a teletype.”
Comment from 23 Apr 2026 in “Introducing GPT-5.5” “since standard is king: ed it is”
Comment from 24 Dec 2025 in “Some Epstein file redactions are being undone with hacks” Praised as hard to beat
“myself, nothing will ever beat ed”
Comment from 9 Nov 2025 in “AI for Senior Software Engineers” “thanking your lucky stars for ed”
Comment from 23 Feb 2026 in “'Viking' was a job description, not a matter of heredity: Ancient DNA study” “you can't do much better than ed”
Comment from 13 May 2026 in “The vi family” Good for quick, specific tasks
“It's not terrible if you just need to change a few lines.”
Comment from 8 Jan 2026 in “Fixing a Buffer Overflow in Unix v4 Like It's 1973” “I think ed is still a great editor for specific tasks.”
Comment from 9 Jan 2026 in “Fixing a Buffer Overflow in Unix v4 Like It's 1973”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Dated and unpleasant to use
“which in my experience, roughly translates to ‘ugh’”
Comment from 23 Feb 2026 in “'Viking' was a job description, not a matter of heredity: Ancient DNA study” “that's about as much praise as I can give it”
Comment from 12 Aug 2026 in “A shell exclamation mark is not for yelling. Be lazy” “The ed(1) command set 50 years old.”
Comment from 5 Jul 2026 in “Mouse: Precision Editing Tools for AI Coding Agents” - Comment from 28 Jan 2026 in “Show HN: Dwm.tmux – a dwm-inspired window manager for tmux”
Other text editors people recommend
The four most recommended other text editors, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zed | 700 | 430 | 62% | 13 | 6 mo57 owners | — |
| GNU Emacs | 648 | 207 | 76% | 13 | 20 yrs158 owners | Approved |
| Vim | 513 | 127 | 80% | 13 | 20 yrs55 owners | Approved |
| Visual Studio Code | 485 | 547 | 47% | 12 | 2 yrs13 owners | — |
| ed text editorThis page | 21 | 5 | 81% | 10 | — | Approved |
What people said
22 of the 29 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“You can do a gazillion edits with it in one shot.”
“what wouldn't be possible with POSIX ed?”
“that's about as much praise as I can give it”
“The ed(1) command set 50 years old.”
“If you want a fun read and you like sci-fi, check out Ed by qntm”
“You can and should learn vi (and ed!) in one afternoon even if you never use them.”
“you can't do much better than ed”
“We've got a tool for exactly that setting, so it would be fun to try it!”
“having some state persist in ed would seem to help”
“Ed is so bloated, using your systems memory to hold file contents!”
“It is surprisingly sparing on tokens, which makes sense since those things were designed to work with a teletype.”
“thanking your lucky stars for ed”
“which in my experience, roughly translates to ‘ugh’”
“Line-based instead of having to manage cursor movements.”
“Even ed(1) is more useful that what has been presented so far.”
“Do I regret using `ed` as my primary editor? No.”
“which was as bad as it sounds”
“I think ed is still a great editor for specific tasks.”
“It's not terrible if you just need to change a few lines.”
“it's lacking some features available in newer versions of ed”
“since standard is king: ed it is”
“myself, nothing will ever beat ed”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.