Text editor

A text editor is a piece of computer software for editing plain text.

History

Before text editors existed, computer text was punched into Hollerith cards with keypunch machines. The text was carried as a physical box of these thin cardboard cards, and read into a card-reader.

Related Topics:
Hollerith card - Keypunch

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The first text editors were line editors oriented on typewriter style terminals and they did not provide a window or screen-oriented display. They usually had very short commands (typewriters were not very reliable) that reproduced the current line. Among them were command to print a selected section(s) of the file on the typewriter (or printer) in case of necessity. An "edit cursor", an imaginary insertion point, can be moved by special commands that operated with line numbers of specific text strings (context). Later the context strings were extended to regular expressions. To see the changes the file needed to be printed of the printer. These "line-based text editors" were considered revolutionary improvements over keypunch machines. In cases typewriter-based terminals were not available they were adapted to keypunch equipment. In this case the user needed to punch the commands into the separate deck of cards and feed them into the computer in order to edit the file.

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When computer terminals with video screens became inexpensive, screen-based text editors became common. One of the earliest "full screen" editors is vi, which is still a standard editor for UNIX and Linux operating systems. The productivity of editing using these editors (compared to the line-based editors) motivated many of the early purchases of video terminals.

Related Topics:
Computer terminal - Vi - UNIX - Linux

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