this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2023
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I've seen Linux distributions omitting it now. But it's a useful last resort if you end up with a dumb terminal, and maybe it has a niche use in scripted editing? And of course there's a small community of people continuing to use it for fun, out of curiosity, or whatever. Check out https://bsd.network/web/@ed1conf
Edit: and https://www.tiltedwindmillpress.com/product/ed/
Is ending up with a dumb terminal without seeking one out a thing that can still happen? Unless you're trapped in an electronic components warehouse and have to build your own, haha.
I'm not sure I've ever seen one outside of a historical context. I guess the military might still use them for prod.
Yes. Sometimes terminal emulators or the libraries in use just fail. Plain old print line might still work.
One of the great things of command driven editors like vi, sam, ed, and helix is that they can tolerate massive lag and various kinds of brokenness.
What does kind of offset this is that there's less need these days to try and talk to broken systems. You can often just pull the drive/card or boot from another source and fix the image or something.