Have you run into that? I can't recall ever facing that issue. Seems very weird to strip down that much and then use a different editor. Do you remember if ed was missing in those machines?
> Do you remember if ed was missing in those machines
I had to laugh out loud. I couldn't imagine such a system, that wouldn't be POSIX compliant. So I looked it up, and indeed, it's entirely possible. Debian doesn't necessarily include it.