# A short guide to the ed editor

> A short guide to the ed editor, the original UNIX text editor, covering how to enter write mode with a, save the buffer to a file, print content and quit.

Author: [Flavio Copes](https://flaviocopes.com/about/) | Published: 2020-11-01 | Topics: [CLI](https://flaviocopes.com/tags/cli/) | Canonical: https://flaviocopes.com/linux-command-ed/

`ed` is the original UNIX text editor, and it's the most basic you can work with. It's also very rarely used, if _ever_ used, by most people.

Run it by typing `ed`. This starts an interactive session. Enter in write mode by typing `a` on a single line, and press `enter`. Then type everything you want, and once you are done, write just a dot (`.`) on a line and press `enter`.

Now type `w` followed by a file name to save the buffer to a file. It will return the number of bytes written to the file.

You can then press `q` to quit.

You can edit a file with `ed` by invoking it with the file name: `ed <filename>`. When you press `a` to add, you add content to the bottom of the file.

Inside an `ed` session you can type `,p` to print the current file content.