April fools joke or not, this book is seriously useful. Even though I will likely never use ed(1) directly on purpose, I'm now comfortable enough to get by. More importantly, I discovered a lot of the underlying logic behind vim's Ex mode, g/re/p, and sed that weren't as intuitive before. Michael's tone and humor kept what could have been a very boring topic wildly engaging. I was sharing snippets with people all throughout my read and even went back to give the regex section a second pass.

If this book has come across your path, do yourself a favor and pick it up. It's worth every penny. ( )

Ed Mastery is the sort of book that restores your faith in humanity.

Michael W. Lucas was about to write his 13th IT Mastery book. 13 is his lucky number so he decided that it needed to be special. He carefully crafted a plan.That plan was to release the 13th book on April 1st (April Fool's Day). The book would be sponsored by folks who had no idea what they were getting. They weren't told the topic, the title, or anything about the book. They relied on their blind faith that MWL would give them a book worth reading.

Their faith was not in vain.

Ed Mastery is the sort of book that lets you know straightaway that it's tongue-in-cheek. It refers to Ed as the standard UNIX text editor and pokes fun at those of us using "glass teletypes" to enter in our code.

But where Ed Mastery really shines is that it's a damn good book. What sets this book apart is that it not only teaches you Ed but also teaches where some of the arcane bits of UNIX come from. Ed Mastery explains things like Ed's regex syntax (which vi and other programs borrow). It points out that grep is really g/re/p in Ed, and shows where the keystrokes for editors like vi had their beginnings. While learning Ed you also learn foundational concepts of UNIX. More than once I exclaimed "That's where that came from!" at the pages of this book.

What also makes this a masterful book that it has multiple layers of humor in it. The preface speaks of two versions of the book (The standard version and the "Manly Mc. Manface version" in terms that I will best leave to MWL's own writing.

Ed Mastery is the best sort of book from an age where computer books had humor, intelligence, and witticisms to keep you reading and learning. Even if you only use nano and gedit as your editors you'd be well-served picking up this book. It's one of the best computing books I've ever read. ( )