Re: whatnow: problems with edit--draft left

Thus said Ralph Corderoy on Thu, 06 Jun 2024 11:15:43 +0100:

> My guess is you're imperfect in your ed-ing.  :-)

Or perhaps the ed utility is poorly implemented.  Man page for OpenBSD's ed:


EXIT STATUS
     The ed utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.


Does this statement mean that there  was an error during the sequence of
ed commands or does it mean that there was an error in saving?

At any rate, observe:

$ ed /tmp/foo
/tmp/foo: No such file or directory
a
foo
.
wq
4
$ echo $?
0
$ ed /tmp/foo
4
/bar
?
$a
bar
.
wq
8
$ echo $?
0


So,  in my  case, ed  exited 0.  Is  this a  bug in  OpenBSD's ed  which
claims  to  be "compliant  with  the  IEEE Std  1003.1-2008  ("POSIX.1")
specification", or a bug in the man page?

Andy