Greg A. Woods wrote:

> Well to some folks it might be obscure, but that's my point.  If more
> people learned at least the basics of 'ed' with enough depth that they
> could use its basic features without having to read the manual again,
> then they would not only be able to use it as a text editor in an
> emergency but they'd also have learned a great deal about Unix in
> general too.

I understand the first part (useful in emergency), but I don't see which 
parts of unix can be learned from ed. The shell is a more appropriate 
example for that.

> 
> Well that just proves you do have lots to learn from 'ed' yet!  ;-)
> 

that's unfortunately true. everytime I got stuck, I promiss to learn it, 
but once things get solved, the promiss get lost after the second boot...

> 
> Well, the idea is that you'd put that script or one like in the form of
> a shell function in the .profile you keep in /rescue with other similar
> goodies you might like to have so that when the day comes that you're
> under pressure to fix something and you need a quick-and-dirty "pager"
> in the /rescue environment then all you have to do is use it.

Why not have a lib of useful shell functions in the dist?