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I have recently begun learning ed, however I've come to the point where I need to search for text. My first attempt was ed's / command, which will show occurrences, but doesn't include line numbers. Is this achievable in vanilla ed?

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You can use the g + n (global + number commands):

$ ed -p 'ed> ' file ed> ,p tree apple lemon fruit not here pear apricot end ed> g/a/n 2 apple 7 pear 8 apricot

Always check the documentation to see all commands available: POSIX Ed and GNU Ed.

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You may use = to output the line number of a line in the editing buffer. To search with some expression RE and output the line number of the first hit, use

/RE/ =

The n command outputs the current line prefixed by its line number. Applying it to some other line or range of lines is also possible:

/RE/ n

To get the line numbers of all matching lines, combine = or n with the g command. Note however that since the default address of the = command is the last line of the editing buffer, not the current line, using = would output the wrong result with g unless we explicitly give it the . address. So use

g/RE/ .=

to get only the line numbers of all lines matching RE.

Use

g/RE/ n

to output all lines matching RE together with their line numbers (similar to grep -n 'RE' although formatted differently).

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