- Free Text Editors
- Text Editor With Line Numbers Mac Os
- Basic Text Editor Mac
- Text Editor With Line Numbers Machine
Original author(s) | Ken Thompson |
---|---|
Developer(s) | AT&T Bell Laboratories |
Initial release | 1973, 46–47 years ago |
Operating system | Unix, Unix-like, Plan 9 |
Type | Text editor |
ed (pronounced as distinct letters, /ˌiːˈdiː/)[1] is a line editor for Unix and Unix-like operating systems. It was one of the first parts of the Unix operating system that was developed, in August 1969.[2] It remains part of the POSIX and Open Group standards for Unix-based operating systems,[3] alongside the more sophisticated full-screen editor vi.
An example of a text editor is TextEdit, which is included with the macOS software. Here is how you can create a text file: Open and use TextEdit and create a text file. Open the TextEdit app on your Mac (Applications TextEdit, or use Spotlight, press Command-Space bar, to search, find and open TextEdit). TextEdit is a text editing and word. Large file text editor; IDM PowerTips Large file text editor. 'Disable line numbers'. If you plan to edit and move around quite a bit in large files, make sure to enable this option. UltraEdit requires more processing to calculate line numbers when moving to different places in extremely large files. (LF only) or Mac legacy (CR only. Text editors using a large number of population in the world. Here are different types of editor for a different purpose. We know notepad that default application installed in windows that supports basic text editing features. Software programmers and web developers use advanced text editors with highly advanced features predefined in it.
History and influence[edit]
The ed text editor was one of the first three key elements of the Unix operating system—assembler, editor, and shell—developed by Ken Thompson in August 1969 on a PDP-7 at AT&T Bell Labs.[4] Many features of ed came from the qed text editor developed at Thompson's alma materUniversity of California, Berkeley.[5] Thompson was very familiar with qed, and had reimplemented it on the CTSS and Multics systems. Thompson's versions of qed were notable as the first to implement regular expressions. Regular expressions are also implemented in ed, though their implementation is considerably less general than that in qed.
Dennis M. Ritchie produced what Doug McIlroy later described as the 'definitive' ed,[6] and aspects of ed went on to influence ex, which in turn spawned vi. The non-interactive Unix command grep was inspired by a common special use of qed and later ed, where the command g/re/p means globally search for the regular expression re and print the lines containing it. The Unix stream editor, sed implemented many of the scripting features of qed that were not supported by ed on Unix.
Features[edit]
Features of ed include:
- available on essentially all Unix systems (and mandatory on systems conforming to the Single Unix Specification).
- support for regular expressions
- powerful automation can be achieved by feeding commands from standard input
(In)famous for its terseness, ed gives almost no visual feedback,[7] and has been called (by Peter H. Salus) 'the most user-hostile editor ever created', even when compared to the contemporary (and notoriously complex) TECO.[2] For example, the message that ed will produce in case of error, or when it wants to make sure the user wishes to quit without saving, is '?'. It does not report the current filename or line number, or even display the results of a change to the text, unless requested. Older versions (c. 1981) did not even ask for confirmation when a quit command was issued without the user saving changes.[7] This terseness was appropriate in the early versions of Unix, when consoles were teletypes, modems were slow, and memory was precious. As computer technology improved and these constraints were loosened, editors with more visual feedback became the norm.
In current practice, ed is rarely used interactively, but does find use in some shell scripts. For interactive use, ed was subsumed by the sam, vi and Emacs editors in the 1980s. ed can be found on virtually every version of Unix and Linux available, and as such is useful for people who have to work with multiple versions of Unix. On Unix-based operating systems, some utilities like SQL*Plus run ed as the editor if the EDITOR and VISUAL environment variables are not defined.[8] If something goes wrong, ed is sometimes the only editor available. This is often the only time when it is used interactively.
In addition, the version of ed provided by GNU has a few switches to enhance the feedback. Using ed -v -p:
provides a simple prompt and enables more useful feedback messages.[9] The -p
switch is defined in POSIX since XPG2 (1987).[3]
The ed commands are often imitated in other line-based editors. For example, EDLIN in early MS-DOS versions and 32-bit versions of Windows NT has a somewhat similar syntax, and text editors in many MUDs (LPMud and descendants, for example) use ed-like syntax. These editors, however, are typically more limited in function.
Example[edit]
Here is an example transcript of an ed session. For clarity, commands and text typed by the user are in normal face, and output from ed is emphasized.
The end result is a simple text file containing the following text:
Started with an empty file, the a
command appends text (all ed commands are single letters). The command puts ed in insert mode, inserting the characters that follow and is terminated by a single dot on a line. The two lines that are entered before the dot end up in the file buffer. The 2i
command also goes into insert mode, and will insert the entered text (a single empty line in our case) before line two. All commands may be prefixed by a line number to operate on that line.
In the line ,l
, the lowercase L stands for the list command. The command is prefixed by a range, in this case ,
which is a shortcut for 1,$
. A range is two line numbers separated by a comma ($
means the last line). In return, ed lists all lines, from first to last. These lines are ended with dollar signs, so that white space at the end of lines is clearly visible.
Once the empty line is inserted in line 2, the line which reads 'This is line number two.' is now actually the third line. This error is corrected with 3s/two/three/
, a substitution command. The 3
will apply it to the correct line; following the command is the text to be replaced, and then the replacement. Listing all lines with ,l
the line is shown now to be correct.
w text
writes the buffer to the file 'text' making ed respond with 65, the number of characters written to the file. q
will end an ed session.
Cultural references[edit]
The GNU project has numerous jokes around ed hosted on its website. In addition, an error code called ED
is defined in glibc: when asked to print out its description (errorstr), the library returns a single question mark. The documentation is simply 'the experienced user will know what is wrong.'[10]
See also[edit]
- ex (text editor), originally an extended version of ed
- vi, the visual full-screen editor based on ex
- sed, the standard UNIX stream editor based on the scripting features in ed
- Edlin, the standard MS-DOS line editor which was inspired by ed
References[edit]
- ^Computerphile (2018-07-06), Where GREP Came From – Computerphile, retrieved 2020-10-21
- ^ abSalus, Peter H. (2005). The Daemon, the Gnu and the Penguin. Groklaw.
- ^ ab
ed
– Commands & Utilities Reference, The Single UNIX Specification, Issue 7 from The Open Group - ^The Peter H. Salus, Daemon, the Gnu and the Penguin. Ch. 2 & 3. Thursday, April 14, 2005 @ 10:56 PM EDT. http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050414215646742 Accessed 10/29/2015.
- ^D. M. Ritchie and K. L. Thompson, 'QED Text Editor', MM-70-1373-3 (June 1970), reprinted as 'QED Text Editor Reference Manual', MHCC-004, Murray Hill Computing, Bell Laboratories (October 1972).
- ^McIlroy, M. D. (1987). A Research Unix reader: annotated excerpts from the Programmer's Manual, 1971–1986(PDF) (Technical report). CSTR. Bell Labs. 139.
- ^ abDonald A. Norman (1981). 'The truth about UNIX'(PDF). Datamation.
- ^Administering SQL*Plus. https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E11882_01/server.112/e10839/admn_sqlpls.htm#UNXAR166 Accessed 7/23/2016.
- ^
ed(1)
– Linux General Commands Manual - ^'The GNU C Library - Error Codes'. ftp.gnu.org.
External links[edit]
The Wikibook Guide to Unix has a page on the topic of: Commands |
ed
: edit text – Commands & Utilities Reference, The Single UNIX Specification, Issue 7 from The Open Group- Manual page from Unix First Edition describing ed.
ed(1)
: text editor – Version 7 Unix Programmer's Manualed(1)
: text editor – Plan 9 Programmer's Manual, Volume 1, a direct descendant of the original ed.- A History of UNIX before Berkeley section 3.1 describes the history of ed.
- By
One of the most common mistakes WordPress-newbies make is using a word processor (like Microsoft Word, Pages, and WordPerfect) to edit server-side source-code files (such as .html, .css and .php files, etc). The problem here is that word processors need to embed a lot of extra data in the file (behind the scenes) in order to define various things like font styles, etc — data that is almost always both specific to the word processor being used AND completely incomprehensible to the kind of server-side systems required to run websites (be them powered by WordPress or otherwise). The solution, however, is extremely simple: when creating and/or editing server-side files (such as those used with WordPress) be sure to only ever use a purpose-built Text Editor. Let’s take a look at a few of the best options created specifically for the task: both free and premium — for both Macs and Windows:
Premium Text Editors:
Looking for more than just a basic text editor and got the cash to spare? Then go for one of these (note: scroll down for some excellent free alternatives)…
Sublime Text (for Windows, Macs, and Linux)
Publicly released in 2008, Sublime Text is now one of the most popular and highly-regarded text editors available! One of the most notable things that sets this particular software apart is that it works across all three major platforms (Windows, OSX, and Linux) — on top of which it also supports a huge range of languages, has extensive customizability via JSON settings files (including project-specific and platform-specific settings), and offers a huge range of features including column selection and multi-select editing, auto-completion, snippets, in-editor code building and a particularly handy navigation system that lets users open files with only a few keystrokes and instantly jump to specific symbols, lines or words.
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Price – $70 (note: free trial available).
BBEdit (for Macs)
Designed specifically for software developers and web designers (and with over 20 years of history), BBEdit contains powerful multi-file text searching capabilities including strong support for Perl-compatible regular expressions and GREP. It includes FTP and SFTP tools, integrates with various code management systems, supports version control, shows differences between file versions and allows for the merging of changes. Also noteworthy is the fact that the same company that makes BBEdit, also offer an entirely free version named ‘TextWrangler’ (see below) — which may very well suffice if all you’re looking for is a top-notch text editor to edit (or even create) a few source files from time to time!
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Price – $49.99 (note: free trial available).
TextMate (for Macs)
Billed as ‘the missing editor’ and awarded the Apple Design Award for Best Developer Tool at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in 2006, TextMate is a much-loved text editor with a number of notable features, including declarative customizations, tabs for open documents, recordable macros, folding sections, snippets, shell integration, and an extensible bundle system. In short: it’s both a joy to use and highly-capable — what’s more, it’s also particularly well-documented — heck, it even has its own book! If you’re a hardcore coder developing on the Mac, be sure to check this one out!
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Price – $54 (note: free trial available).
Free Text Editors:
Although the above premium text editors are all very very nice, if you’re only a basic/beginner developer then you may well find one of these free options will more than suffice…
Atom (for Windows, Macs and Linux)
Released on June 25th 2015, Atom is the newest text editor on this list — and a choice that professional coders everywhere will likely want to seriously consider! Written in CoffeeScript and Less, Atom is a completely free and open-source text editor with support for plugins written in Node.js — referred to by its creators as “A hackable text editor for the 21st Century”.
Atom is a text editor that’s modern and extremely user-friendly — a tool you can customize to do just about anything with. It features cross-platform editing, a built-in package manager, smart auto-completion, a file system browser, four UI and eight built-in syntax themes, multiple panes and — of course: handy find and replace features.
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TextWrangler (for Macs)
The free alternative to BBEdit (see above), TextWrangler differs to its premium counterpart in a number of ways — all of which are detailed in a nice table on the official Bare Bones website here (notably lacking various HTML markup tools, text completion and file organization features). Whenever I find myself having to recommend an entirely free text editor for the Mac (or when I need to use one on someone else’s computer etc), I almost invariably go straight for this one — mainly because it’s just so darn simple to use!
Free Text Editors
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Komodo Edit (for Windows, Macs, and Linux)
The free and Open-Source counterpart of Komodo IDE, Komodo Edit allows user customization through plug-ins and macros, and boasts a range of different features, including auto complete, multiple selections, smart snippets (view a complete list). The downside of all this free power though is because of its IDE roots, it perhaps isn’t quite as user-friendly as some of its simpler rivals. By all means give it a go (especially if you’re more of an advanced user), but if all you’re wanting to do is edit a few individual source files, then this one might just be a bit too daunting to start out with!
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Notepad++ (for Windows)
Regarded by many as the best free text editor available for Windows (and with over 28 million downloads to date), Notepad++ is a robust, powerful and highly capable text editor that gets the job done! It supports over 50 programing languages, opens large files significantly faster than the default Windows Notepad (mentioned below) and boasts a range of impressive features, including tabbed editing (thereby allowing you to work with multiple open files in a single window), split screen, auto-completion, macros, syntax highlighting, syntax folding and a whole host of other handy functionality!
Plus two more (the Default Mac & Windows Text Editors):
Although sometimes completely overlooked, both Mac and Window operating systems both come with their own default text editors built in — and whilst they’re certainly not the best (having none of the refinements of their more fully featured counterparts), they’ll certainly do the job if all you’re looking to do is make a few simple edits…
Notepad (for Windows)
Offering only the most basic text manipulation functions, such as finding and replacing text, Notepad (not to be confused with WordPad — which is NOT a text editor) is by far the most basic text editor listed in this article — with almost none of the handy features (syntax coloring, code folding, regular expressions, macros, block-select, etc, etc) found in just about all of its 3rd party counterparts!
TextEdit (for Macs)
Mac’s default text editor, TextEdit, combines features of a text editor with those of a word processor, such as rulers, margins, and multiple font selections — allowing it to be used as both a text editor AND a basic word processor — depending on the settings/preferences. Similarly to Notepad (mentioned above), it has almost none of the numerous features found in its 3rd party rivals. While it may well do the job for a basic edit or two, if you’re intending to edit server-side files on a regular basis, you’ll do a lot better with one of the free or premium options mentioned above.
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Wrapping up: How to Choose? Which is Best?
Well, first off: all seven of these text editors are built for coders and all seven are pretty darn awesome! What’s more, every one of them is available as a free trial — meaning you can give each a carefree whirl before deciding. If you’re a hardcore coder working in multiple languages you’ll probably appreciate some of the specific software development tools and high-end functionality (like multiple selections, split editing and project organization features) found only in some of the premium options (if this sounds like you then be sure to check out about the most popular premium text editing software available: Sublime Text) — update: serious coders should also be sure to check out the newest on this list: Atom — however, if you’re only a casual coder looking for a top-end text editor with basic features like syntax highlighting, macros and spell-checking, etc, then maybe start with say TextWrangler (a personal favorite of mine) if you’re on the Mac or Notepad++ if you’re a Windows user and see how you get on — after all, there’s really no need to pay top-dollar for features you’ll perhaps never use/need!
Text Editor With Line Numbers Mac Os
Note: For a comprehensive list of just about all the different text editors currently available check out this Wikipedia article.
Top tip: before editing any files, ALWAYS make a quick back up of them first: because there’s usually no going back once things have been overwritten without one!
Know of any other top text editors for Macs and/or Windows? Any preferences?