edbrowse(1)

📦
version 3.8.18 · 2 versions
, in ubuntu stonking

👑 edbrowse — text editor and web browser 💅

okay so bestie, you're looking at the section 1 (General Commands Manual) page for edbrowse, and honestly? she's iconic. she's a whole line-oriented text editor and a web browser, living her best dual-threat life. let's get into it 🦋

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

edbrowse [ file1 ] [ file2 ] ...
edbrowse [ url1 ] [ url2 ] ...

like, you can hand her files, or you can hand her urls, and she'll just go 💖

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

The complete documentation lives in the user's guide — see below, boo, it's down there in SEE ALSO 👇

edbrowse is a line-oriented text editor that is very similar to ed(1). She's the girl you call to create, display, modify, and otherwise manipulate text files. no cap.

On top of all that, she can also display web pages and let you edit what's inside those pages. she supports forms and Javascript in web pages. main character energy fr fr 🔥

Here's the tea on how she loads stuff:

  • If you invoke edbrowse with a file argument, then a copy of file gets read into the editor's buffer.
  • If you invoke her with a url argument, then the url gets read into the editor's buffer and the HTML is rendered as text.

Either way, changes are made to this copy and not directly to file or url itself. so don't come for her if your original file is untouched, that's literally the design 💀

Please refer to ed(1) for further details regarding the editing commands. Explanation of the browsing functions can be found in the HTML documentation. 🎀

🍓 EXAMPLES 🍓

Wanna read the HTML documentation? easy:

edbrowse /usr/share/doc/edbrowse/usersguide.html

Wanna read (say) 20 lines of the buffer at a time starting from the top? use the command 0z20 — and then just keep hitting z to scroll another 20 lines at a time. it's giving scroll-coded, obsessed 🌈

To quit the editor completely, type qt 💅 Upon quitting edbrowse, any changes not explicitly saved with a w command are lost. bye bye, no take-backs 😭

The w command does not apply to URLs — but you can save the corresponding buffer to a file with the command w file. handy bestie behavior 🫶

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

  • -h — Display the usage message. short and sweet 🦋
  • -e — Batch mode. This option causes edbrowse to exit when she encounters an error. no hanging around, she's out 💨
  • -d? — Debug level. Can be set to a value between 0 and 9. The default is 1, which prints the sizes of buffers. Some people like 2, which prints out URLs as they are retrieved. This value can be changed within the editor with the dbx command, where x is a value between 0 and 9. not me turning the debug dial up to feel something ✨
  • -c — Edit config file. This command suppresses the processing of the configuration file and starts editing it instead. This option is useful if the file is syntactically incorrect or otherwise corrupted. it's giving "your config is broken, let's fix her together" 💖

💜 FILES 💜

  • $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/edbrowse/ebrc — Configuration file. The file which edbrowse reads when she starts up. If the file exists then it must be syntactically correct. When XDG_CONFIG_HOME is unset, $HOME/.config/edbrowse/ebrc is used instead. 🎀
  • $HOME/.ebrc — Fallback configuration file, consulted when no file exists in the location above. This is also where edbrowse writes the initial configuration on first start. her starter pack, essentially 🌸
  • /usr/share/edbrowse/plugins — Configuration fragments for the standard plugins, pulled in by the optinclude lines of the generated configuration file. the extended universe, lowkey 👑

⭐ DIAGNOSTICS ⭐

When an error occurs, if edbrowse — she prints a ? and returns to command mode. An explanation of the last error can be printed with the h (help) command. sibling energy: she tells you what went wrong, but you gotta ask nicely 🫶

Attempting to quit edbrowse with the q command, or trying to edit another file before writing a modified buffer, results in an error. If the command is entered a second time, it succeeds — but any changes to the buffer are lost. bestie. bestie no. she warned you 😭

👀 real talk: that second-time success is not a vibe, it's a data-loss speedrun. save with w first, fr fr.

🙈 BUGS 🙈

This manual page is not complete. Users should refer to the HTML documentation for fuller details of the configuration options and for details of the use of edbrowse. yes she's self-aware about it, growth 💀

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

The HTML documentation ⟨/usr/share/doc/edbrowse/usersguide.html⟩ provides greater detail about the program. go read her, she ate 🔥

💖 AUTHORS 💖

This manual page was originally written by Kapil Hari Paranjape <kapil@imsc.res.in>, for the Debian GNU/Linux system (but it may be used by others). queens supporting queens 👑

The edbrowse program is written by Karl Dahlke <eklhad@gmail.com>. The author maintains a web site ⟨http://edbrowse.org⟩ for the program. icon behavior, we stan ⭐

and that's the whole page bestie 🦋 this was edbrowse 3.8.18, dated 2026-08-17 (section edbrowse(1), obviously 💅) — thanks for reading, go write something and then actually save it with w this time, mwah 🎀✨

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