ryanprior / ed-mode

ed for Emacs

ed for Emacs

ed-mode lets you interact with Emacs buffers like you would do with the ed editor.

Installation

Make sure that ed-mode.el is in your load-path, then add (require 'ed) to your init file.

Usage

Use ed by opening a file like you’d normally do, and then do: M‑x ed RET

ed-mode's Issues

Upstreaming to Guix

Hi @ryanprior

I currently have this package sitting at libremiami-packages and I would like to upstream it.

Are you planning to make a release?

Also how have you successfully ran the tests in the past?

I currently have tests disabled in the guix package I linked above.

I have the relevant test command I tried running in a comment in the package definition linked above and below here:

(native-inputs
  `(("ert-runner" ,emacs-ert-runner)))
(arguments
 `(#:tests? #t
    #:test-command '("emacs" "-Q" "-batch" "-l" "ed-mode-tests.el" "-f" "ert-run-tests-batch-and-exit")))

all best

(u)ndo doesn't always do what it should

Hello! @ryanprior recently e-mailed me about this amazing repository. While my original CVS repository of this thing is probably gone for good (and with that the TODO file that I once had), I spent a while trying to remember what "original" issues still might persist.

The only relevant one is that ed-cmd-undo doesn't work like in other implementantions of ed. This is mentioned in the docstring, but to clarify, here's one example I managed to think of:

In standard ed I can do this:

i
this is the first line
.
a
this is the second line
this is the third line
.
1,$p
this is the first line
this is the second line
this is the third line
u
1,$p
this is the first line

So the undo reverts the changes made to the buffer by the previous command. However, in ed-mode.el this happens:

i
this is the first line
.
a
this is the second line
this is the third line
.
1,$p
this is the first line
this is the second line
this is the third line

u
1,$p
this is the first line
this is the second line

So calling the Emacs undo doesn't revert everything that was appended by the second command but just the last line - which, now that I think about it, is quite logical since we are just doing line-by-line inserts into the buffer.

I'm not 100 % sure if this is just an issue with input mode commands (i, a and c) - but if that is the case, the fix might be a lot easier than what I thought 14 years ago: just build an intermediate buffer string while doing input mode, then insert it all in one go when . is used to exit. If everything gets inserted in one go, then I think undo should also work properly.

If someone can think of other cases than i / a / c where undo messes up, then we might need to think of something more elaborate 😄

Other than this, I just had some commands missing, and it looks like @echosa already has a pull request for adding placeholders. Nice!

Needs unit tests

In terms of ed correctness, GNU ed has tests which might be helpful if they can be converted to work with a more elisp-friendly harness.
https://www.gnu.org/software/ed/