Re: GNU ed 1.20 released

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Antonio,

> I don't like the idea of printing random unsolicited text at
> startup.  The line printed may be long, may be empty, may not exist
> (if the file is empty), or may contain confusing text resembling an
> error message or a byte count.  And it may be even worse if ed is
> invoked indirectly and "the user doesn't see '+4'".

My suggestion would avoid this as the user would explicitly choose to
+42p over +42 if they want the line printed.  Or +42n or +'$-3l'.

> It would be better to print an informative message like "Starting at
> line 4", "Moving to line 4", or "Current line set to 4".

This is very much not in the spirit of ed.  Or Unix, come to that.
Please don't do this.

-- 
Cheers, Ralph.