How To Use A Text Editor

*Copyright 1991 by Simon Fraser University. Reprinted with permission.

The vi editor is available on almost all Unix systems. vi can be used from any type of terminal because it does not depend on arrow keys and function keys--it uses the standard alphabetic keys for commands.

vi (pronounced 'vee-eye') is short for 'vi'sual editor. It displays a window into the file being edited that shows 24 lines of text. vi is a text editor, not a 'what you see is what you get' word processor. vi lets you add, change, and delete text, but does not provide such formatting capabilities as centering lines or indenting paragraphs.

This is an excellent use of the Text Editor widget. Simply drag-in the widget, click Add Media and upload an image of your choosing to the media library of WordPress. Then click the image, and adjust the alignment settings to wrap the text around the image, with the image to the right or left of the text. Desktop graphical editors Text Editor. When using Raspberry Pi OS Desktop, in the accessories menu there is an option to run a Text Editor. This is a simple editor which opens in a window like a normal application. It allows use of the mouse and keyboard, and has tabs and syntax highlighting. The WordPress Text Editor is simply a large box with a horizontal toolbar and a white textarea. The toolbar can be modified depending on the mode you are using and just below is a large textarea which you can use to write and edit your text or copy & paste text inside. Choosing between Visual and Text mode. The WordPress Text Editor is simply a large box with a horizontal toolbar and a white textarea. The toolbar can be modified depending on the mode you are using and just below is a large textarea which you can use to write and edit your text or copy & paste text inside. Choosing between Visual and Text.

This help note explains the basics of vi:

• opening and closing a file
• moving around in a file
• elementary editing

vi has many other commands and options not described here. The following resources can help you get started using the vi editor, and are available at the UW University Book Store:

• 'vi Tutorial.' Specialized Systems Consultants (SSC).
• 'vi Reference.' Specialized Systems Consultants (SSC).
• 'Learning the vi Editor.' Linda Lamb, 1990.

Starting vi

You may use vi to open an already existing file by typing

where 'filename' is the name of the existing file. If the file is not in your current directory, you must use the full pathname.

Or you may create a new file by typing

where 'newname' is the name you wish to give the new file.

To open a new file called 'testvi,' enter

On-screen, you will see blank lines, each with a tilde (~) at the left, and a line at the bottom giving the name and status of the new file:

vi Modes

vi has two modes:

• command mode
• insert mode

In command mode, the letters of the keyboard perform editing functions (like moving the cursor, deleting text, etc.). To enter command mode, press the escape key.

In insert mode, the letters you type form words and sentences. Unlike many word processors, vi starts up in command mode.

Entering Text

In order to begin entering text in this empty file, you must change from command mode to insert mode. To do this, type

Nothing appears to change, but you are now in insert mode and can begin typing text. In general, vi's commands do not display on the screen and do not require the Return key to be pressed.

Type a few short lines and press at the end of each line. If you type a long line, you will notice the vi does not word wrap, it merely breaks the line unceremoniously at the edge of the screen.

If you make a mistake, pressing or may remove the error, depending on your terminal type.

Moving the Cursor

To move the cursor to another position, you must be in command mode. If you have just finished typing text, you are still in insert mode. Go back to command mode by pressing . If you are not sure which mode you are in, press once or twice until you hear a beep. When you hear the beep, you are in command mode.

The cursor is controlled with four keys: h, j, k, l.

When you have gone as far as possible in one direction, the cursor stops moving and you hear a beep. For example, you cannot use l to move right and wrap around to the next line, you must use j to move down a line. See the section entitled 'Moving Around in a File' for ways to move more quickly through a file.

Basic Editing

Editing commands require that you be command mode. Many of the editing commands have a different function depending on whether they are typed as upper- or lowercase. Often, editing commands can be preceded by a number to indicate a repetition of the command.

Deleting Characters

To delete a character from a file, move the cursor until it is on the incorrect letter, then type

The character under the cursor disappears. To remove four characters (the one under the cursor and the next three) type

To delete the character before the cursor, type

Deleting Words

To delete a word, move the cursor to the first letter of the word, and type

This command deletes the word and the space following it.

To delete three words type

Deleting Lines

To delete a whole line, type

The cursor does not have to be at the beginning of the line. Typing dd deletes the entire line containing the cursor and places the cursor at the start of the next line. To delete two lines, type

To delete from the cursor position to the end of the line, type How do i download google chrome on windows 7.

Replacing Characters

To replace one character with another:

1. Move the cursor to the character to be replaced.
2. Type r
3. Type the replacement character.

The new character will appear, and you will still be in command mode.

Replacing Words

To replace one word with another, move to the start of the incorrect word and type

The last letter of the word to be replaced will turn into a $. You are now in insert mode and may type the replacement. The new text does not need to be the same length as the original. Press to get back to command mode. To replace three words, type

Replacing Lines

To change text from the cursor position to the end of the line:

1. Type C (uppercase).
2. Type the replacement text.
3. Press .

Inserting Text

To insert text in a line:

1. Position the cursor where the new text should go.
2. Type i
3. Enter the new text.

The text is inserted BEFORE the cursor.

4. Press to get back to command mode.

Appending Text

To add text to the end of a line:

1. Position the cursor on the last letter of the line.
2. Type a
3. Enter the new text.

This adds text AFTER the cursor.

4. Press to get back to command mode.

Opening a Blank Line

To insert a blank line below the current line, type

To insert a blank line above the current line, type

Joining Lines

To join two lines together:

1. Put the cursor on the first line to be joined.
2. Type J

To join three lines together:

1. Put the cursor on the first line to be joined.
2. Type 3J

Undoing

To undo your most recent edit, type

To undo all the edits on a single line, type

Undoing all edits on a single line only works as long as the cursor stays on that line. Once you move the cursor off a line, you cannot use U to restore the line.

Text Editor In Java

Moving Around in a File

There are shortcuts to move more quickly though a file. All these work in command mode.

Moving by Searching

To move quickly by searching for text, while in command mode:

1. Type / (slash).
2. Enter the text to search for.
3. Press .

The cursor moves to the first occurrence of that text.

To repeat the search in a forward direction, type

To repeat the search in a backward direction, type

Closing and Saving a File

With vi, you edit a copy of the file, rather than the original file. Changes are made to the original only when you save your edits.

How do i print a pdf file. To save the file and quit vi, type

The vi editor editor is built on an earler Unix text editor called ex. ex commands can be used within vi. ex commands begin with a : (colon) and end with a . The command is displayed on the status line as you type. Some ex commands are useful when saving and closing files.

To save the edits you have made, but leave vi running and your file open:

1. Press .
2. Type :w
3. Press .

To quit vi, and discard any changes your have made since last saving:

1. Press .
2. Type :q!
3. Press .

Command Summary

STARTING vi

ENTERING TEXT

MOVING THE CURSOR

BASIC EDITING

MOVING AROUND IN A FILE

CLOSING AND SAVING A FILE

A text editor is a type of computer program that edits plain text. Such programs are sometimes known as 'notepad' software, following the naming of Microsoft Notepad.^[1][2][3] Text editors are provided with operating systems and software development packages, and can be used to change files such as configuration files, documentation files and programming languagesource code.^[4]

Plain text vs. rich text[edit]

There are important differences between plain text (created and edited by text editors) and rich text (such as that created by word processors or desktop publishing software).

Plain text exclusively consists of character representation. Each character is represented by a fixed-length sequence of one, two, or four bytes, or as a variable-length sequence of one to four bytes, in accordance to specific character encoding conventions, such as ASCII, ISO/IEC 2022, UTF-8, or Unicode. These conventions define many printable characters, but also non-printing characters that control the flow of the text, such as space, line break, and page break. Plain text contains no other information about the text itself, not even the character encoding convention employed. Plain text is stored in text files, although text files do not exclusively store plain text. In the early days of computers, plain text was displayed using a monospace font, such that horizontal alignment and columnar formatting were sometimes done using whitespace characters. For compatibility reasons, this tradition has not changed.

Rich text, on the other hand, may contain metadata, character formatting data (e.g. typeface, size, weight and style), paragraph formatting data (e.g. indentation, alignment, letter and word distribution, and space between lines or other paragraphs), and page specification data (e.g. size, margin and reading direction). Rich text can be very complex. Rich text can be saved in binary format (e.g. DOC), text files adhering to a markup language (e.g. RTF or HTML), or in a hybrid form of both (e.g. Office Open XML).

Text editors are intended to open and save text files containing either plain text or anything that can be interpreted as plain text, including the markup for rich text or the markup for something else (e.g. SVG).

History[edit]

Before text editors existed, computer text was punched into cards with keypunch machines. Physical boxes of these thin cardboard cards were then inserted into a card-reader. Magnetic tape and disk 'card-image' files created from such card decks often had no line-separation characters at all, and assumed fixed-length 80-character records. An alternative to cards was punched paper tape. It could be created by some teleprinters (such as the Teletype), which used special characters to indicate ends of records.

The first text editors were 'line editors' oriented to teleprinter- or typewriter-style terminals without displays. Commands (often a single keystroke) effected edits to a file at an imaginary insertion point called the 'cursor'. Edits were verified by typing a command to print a small section of the file, and periodically by printing the entire file. In some line editors, the cursor could be moved by commands that specified the line number in the file, text strings (context) for which to search, and eventually regular expressions. Line editors were major improvements over keypunching. Some line editors could be used by keypunch; editing commands could be taken from a deck of cards and applied to a specified file. Some common line editors supported a 'verify' mode in which change commands displayed the altered lines.

When computer terminals with video screens became available, screen-based text editors (sometimes called just 'screen editors') became common. One of the earliest full-screen editors was O26, which was written for the operator console of the CDC 6000 series computers in 1967. Another early full-screen editor was vi. Written in the 1970s, it is still a standard editor^[5] on Unix and Linux operating systems. Also written in the 1970s was the UCSD Pascal Screen Oriented Editor, which was optimized both for indented source code as well as general text.^[6]Emacs, one of the first free and open source software projects, is another early full-screen or real-time editor, one that was ported to many systems.^[7] A full-screen editor's ease-of-use and speed (compared to the line-based editors) motivated many early purchases of video terminals.^[8]

The core data structure in a text editor is the one that manages the string (sequence of characters) or list of records that represents the current state of the file being edited.While the former could be stored in a single long consecutive array of characters,the desire for text editors that could more quickly insert text, delete text, and undo/redo previous edits led to the development of more complicated sequence data structures.^[9]A typical text editor uses a gap buffer, a linked list of lines (as in PaperClip), a piece table, or a rope, as its sequence data structure.

Types of text editors[edit]

Some text editors are small and simple, while others offer broad and complex functions. For example, Unix and Unix-like operating systems have the pico editor (or a variant), but many also include the vi and Emacs editors. Microsoft Windows systems come with the simple Notepad, though many people—especially programmers—prefer other editors with more features. Under Apple Macintosh's classic Mac OS there was the native SimpleText, which was replaced in Mac OS X by TextEdit, which combines features of a text editor with those typical of a word processor such as rulers, margins and multiple font selection. These features are not available simultaneously, but must be switched by user command, or through the program automatically determining the file type.

Most word processors can read and write files in plain text format, allowing them to open files saved from text editors. Saving these files from a word processor, however, requires ensuring the file is written in plain text format, and that any text encoding or BOM settings won't obscure the file for its intended use. Non-WYSIWYG word processors, such as WordStar, are more easily pressed into service as text editors, and in fact were commonly used as such during the 1980s. The default file format of these word processors often resembles a markup language, with the basic format being plain text and visual formatting achieved using non-printing control characters or escape sequences. Later word processors like Microsoft Word store their files in a binary format and are almost never used to edit plain text files.^[10] How to redownload fortnite on switch.

Code Editor Vs Ide

Some text editors can edit unusually large files such as log files or an entire database placed in a single file. Simpler text editors may just read files into the computer's main memory. With larger files, this may be a slow process, and the entire file may not fit. Some text editors do not let the user start editing until this read-in is complete. Editing performance also often suffers in nonspecialized editors, with the editor taking seconds or even minutes to respond to keystrokes or navigation commands. Specialized editors have optimizations such as only storing the visible portion of large files in memory, improving editing performance.

Some editors are programmable, meaning, e.g., they can be customized for specific uses. With a programmable editor it is easy to automate repetitive tasks or, add new functionality or even implement a new application within the framework of the editor. One common motive for customizing is to make a text editor use the commands of another text editor with which the user is more familiar, or to duplicate missing functionality the user has come to depend on. Software developers often use editor customizations tailored to the programming language or development environment they are working in. The programmability of some text editors is limited to enhancing the core editing functionality of the program, but Emacs can be extended far beyond editing text files—for web browsing, reading email, online chat, managing files or playing games and is often thought of as a Lisp execution environment with a Text User Interface. Emacs can even be programmed to emulate Vi, its rival in the traditional editor wars of Unix culture.^[11][12]

An important group of programmable editors uses REXX^[a] as a scripting language. These 'orthodox editors' contain a 'command line' into which commands and macros can be typed and text lines into which line commands^[b] and macros can be typed. Most such editors are derivatives of ISPF/PDFEDIT or of XEDIT, IBM's flagship editor for VM/SP through z/VM. Among them are THE, KEDIT, X2, Uni-edit, and SEDIT.

A text editor written or customized for a specific use can determine what the user is editing and assist the user, often by completing programming terms and showing tooltips with relevant documentation. Many text editors for software developers include source code syntax highlighting and automatic indentation to make programs easier to read and write. Programming editors often let the user select the name of an include file, function or variable, then jump to its definition. Some also allow for easy navigation back to the original section of code by storing the initial cursor location or by displaying the requested definition in a popup window or temporary buffer. Some editors implement this ability themselves, but often an auxiliary utility like ctags is used to locate the definitions.

Typical features[edit]

• Find and replace – Text editors provide extensive facilities for searching and replacing text, either on groups of files or interactively. Advanced editors can use regular expressions to search and edit text or code.
• Cut, copy, and paste – most text editors provide methods to duplicate and move text within the file, or between files.
• Ability to handle UTF-8 encoded text.
• Text formatting – Text editors often provide basic visual formatting features like line wrap, auto-indentation, bullet list formatting using ASCII characters, comment formatting, syntax highlighting and so on. These are typically only for display and do not insert formatting codes into the file itself.
• Undo and redo – As with word processors, text editors provide a way to undo and redo the last edit, or more. Often—especially with older text editors—there is only one level of edit history remembered and successively issuing the undo command will only 'toggle' the last change. Modern or more complex editors usually provide a multiple-level history such that issuing the undo command repeatedly will revert the document to successively older edits. A separate redo command will cycle the edits 'forward' toward the most recent changes. The number of changes remembered depends upon the editor and is often configurable by the user.

Advanced features[edit]

• Macro or procedure definition: to define new commands or features as combinations of prior commands or other macros, perhaps with passed parameters, or with nesting of macros.
• Profiles to retain options set by the user between editing session.
• Profile macros with names specified in, e.g., environment, profile, executed automatically at the beginning of an edit session or when opening a new file.
• Multi-file editing: the ability to edit multiple files during an edit-session, perhaps remembering the current-line cursor of each file, to insert repeated text into each file, copy or move text among files, compare files side-by-side (perhaps with a tiled multiple-document interface), etc.
• Multi-view editors: the ability to display multiple views of the same file, with independent cursor tracking, synchronizing changes among the windows but providing the same facilities as are available for independent files.
• Collapse/expand, also called folding: The ability to temporarily exclude sections of the text from view. This may either be based on a range of line numbers or on some syntactic element, e.g., excluding everything between a BEGIN; and the matching END;.
• Column-based editing; the ability to alter or insert data at a particular column, or to shift data to specific columns.
• Data transformation – Reading or merging the contents of another text file into the file currently being edited. Some text editors provide a way to insert the output of a command issued to the operating system's shell. Also, a case-shifting feature could translate to lowercase or uppercase.
• Filtering – Some advanced text editors allow the editor to send all or sections of the file being edited to another utility and read the result back into the file in place of the lines being 'filtered'. This, for example, is useful for sorting a series of lines alphabetically or numerically, doing mathematical computations, indenting source code, and so on.
• Syntax highlighting – contextually highlights source code, markup languages, config files and other text that appears in an organized or predictable format. Editors generally allow users to customize the colors or styles used for each language element. Some text editors also allow users to install and use themes to change the look and feel of the editor's entire user interface.
• Extensibility - a text editor intended for use by programmers must provide some plugin mechanism, or be scriptable, so a programmer can customize the editor with features needed to manage individual software projects, customize functionality or key bindings for specific programming languages or version control systems, or conform to specific coding styles.

Specialised editors[edit]

Some editors include special features and extra functions, for instance,

• Source code editors are text editors with additional functionality to facilitate the production of source code. These often feature user-programmable syntax highlighting and code navigation functions as well as coding tools or keyboard macros similar to an HTML editor (see below).
• Folding editors. This subclass includes so-called 'orthodox editors' that are derivatives of Xedit. Editors that implement folding without programing-specific features are usually called outliners (see below).
• IDEs (integrated development environments) are designed to manage and streamline large programming projects. They are usually only used for programming as they contain many features unnecessary for simple text editing.
• World Wide Web authors are offered a variety of HTML editors dedicated to the task of creating web pages. These include: Dreamweaver, KompoZer and E Text Editor. Many offer the option of viewing a work in progress on a built-in HTML rendering engine or standard web browser.
• Most web development is done in a dynamic programming language such as Ruby or PHP using a source code editor or IDE. The HTML delivered by all but the simplest static web sites is stored as individual template files that are assembled by the software controlling the site and do not compose a complete HTML document.
• Mathematicians, physicists, and computer scientists often produce articles and books using TeX or LaTeX in plain text files. Such documents are often produced by a standard text editor, but some people use specialized TeX editors.
• Outliners. Also called tree-based editors, because they combine a hierarchical outline tree with a text editor. Folding (see above) can be considered a specialized form of outlining.
• Collaborative editors allow multiple users to work on the same document simultaneously from remote locations over a network. The changes made by individual users are tracked and merged into the document automatically to eliminate the possibility of conflicting edits. These editors also typically include an online chat component for discussion among editors.
• Distraction-free editors provide a minimalistic interface with the purpose of isolating the writer from the rest of the applications and operating system, thus being able to focus on the writing without distractions from interface elements like a toolbar or notification area.

Programmable editors can usually be enhanced to perform any or all of these functions, but simpler editors focus on just one, or, like gPHPedit, are targeted at a single programming language.

See also[edit]

• File viewer – does not change file, faster for very large files and can be more secure
• Hex editor – used for editing binary files
• Stream editor – used for non-interactive editing

Notes[edit]

1. ^Originally macros were written in assembler, CLIST (TSO), CMS EXEC (VM), EXEC2 (VM/SE) or PL/I, but most users dropped CLIST, EXEC and EXEC2 once REXX was available.
2. ^A line command is a command typed into the sequence number entry area associated with a specific line of text and whose scope is limited to that line, or, in the case of a block command, associated with the block of lines between the beginning and ending line commands. An example of the latter would be typing the command ucc (block upper case) into the entry areas of two lines; this has the same effect as typing uc (upper case) into the entry area of each line in the range.

References[edit]

1. ^H. Albert Napier; Ollie N. Rivers; Stuart Wagner (2005). Creating a Winning E-Business. Cengage Learning. p. 330. ISBN1111796092.
2. ^Peter Norton; Scott H. Clark (2002). Peter Norton's New Inside the PC. Sams Publishing. p. 54. ISBN0672322897.
3. ^L. Gopalakrishnan; G. Padmanabhan; Sudhat Shukla (2003). Your Home PC: Making the Most of Your Personal Computer. Tata McGraw-Hill Education. p. 190. ISBN0070473544.
4. ^'The Best Free Text Editors for Windows, Linux, and Mac'. Every operating system comes with a default, basic text editor, but most of us install our own enhanced text editors to get more features.
5. ^'The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 6, IEEE Std 1003.1, 2004 Edition'. The IEEE and The Open Group. 2004. Retrieved January 18, 2010.
6. ^L. Bowles, Kenneth; Hollan, James (1978-07-01). 'An introduction to the UCSD PASCAL system'. Behavior Research Methods. 10 (4): 531–534. doi:10.3758/BF03205341.
7. ^'Introducing the Emacs editing environment'.
8. ^'Multics Emacs: The History, Design and Implementation'. Some Multics users purchased these terminals .., using them either as 'glass teletypes' or via 'local editing.'
9. ^Charles Crowley.'Data Structures for Text Sequences'.Section'Introduction'.
10. ^'Text Editors for Programmeres - Programming Tools'. If you open a .doc file in a text editor, you will notice that most of the file is formatting codes. Text editors, however, do not add formatting codes, which makes it easier to compile your code.
11. ^'From Vim to Emacs+Evil chaotic migration guide'.
12. ^'Gitorious'. Retrieved 27 May 2015.

External links[edit]

• Orthodox Editors as a Special Class of Advanced Editors, discusses Xedit and its clones with an emphasis of folding capabilities and programmability