1) Install rlwrap, which wraps readline around any stdin stream. 2) Save this as something (I call it `rled`)somewhere in your path: #!/usr/bin/env bash

1) Install rlwrap, which wraps readline around any stdin stream. 2) Save this as something (I call it `rled`)somewhere in your path: #!/usr/bin/env bash [ ! -n "$(which rlwrap)" ] && echo "rled: no rlwrap found" >&2 && exit -1 rlwrap ed $@ Now you can use ed with readline which allows line navigation, insertion and history.