ed n. ed is the standard text editor. Line taken from the original Unix manual page on ed, an ancient line-oriented editor that is by now used only by a few Real Programmer s, and even then only for batch operations. The original line is sometimes uttered near the beginning of an emacs vs. vi holy war on Usenet , with the (vain) hope to quench the discussion before it really takes off. Often followed by a standard text describing the many virtues of ed (such as the small memory footprint on a Timex Sinclair, and the consistent (because nearly non-existent) user interface).