With Regex and WordWrap: What Open Source Editor Edit on Windows 11 Excels At

Microsoft has developed a new open source text editor for Windows: edit.exe. This news alone and the claim that the program is based on Visual Studio Code has caused quite a stir online.

David Göhler

David Göhler has been an IT journalist for 38 years and began his training at c't as a trainee in 1987. He has learned more than ten programming languages and still develops software as a hobby. He currently works full-time as a senior content specialist at a Munich PR agency. He is also politically active as a local councillor in a Bavarian municipality.

In principle, a text editor that works in the console and does not open its own window is very useful, because you need such an application especially when you are active remotely on another system (e.g. via ssh). As the application used to be available as a DOS program (edit.com) under 32-bit Windows versions and was removed when switching to 64-bit, this left a gap. The new Edit is now apparently intended to fill this gap, as it also runs in 64-bit Windows 10 and 11.

edit.exe is quickly installed: A call in the terminal with winget install Microsoft.Edit is sufficient. The editor consists only of the exe file and is 230 KB in size. It also does not create any configuration files because there is nothing to configure. The associated GitHub directory shows that the program is written entirely in Rust. Version 1.2 was already released during the test, so the program is being actively and rapidly developed.

As expected, Edit starts extremely quickly and has no problem with files containing tens of thousands of lines. There is a menu at the top of the screen that can be operated with the mouse. It also shows the keyboard shortcuts. There is no help or other overview of key assignments.

The functions of the program are quickly explained. There is a search and replace function, and regular expressions (regex) can also be used when searching, but not when inserting. The editor can open several files at the same time and then switch between them. However, they are not displayed as tabs.

For long lines, you can use a WordWrap – to activate an automatic line break –. In the 1.0.0 version this was still faulty (relatively quickly the cursor and insertion position were no longer synchronized). In the current version 1.1.0, however, the WordWrap is stable. And that's it in terms of functionality. There are no plug-ins, no split windows or tabs, no syntax highlighting or themes, no macros, no multiple cursors or vertical block markers. It is also not possible to assign keys differently or configure anything at all.

This means that the program is only suitable for adapting config files and small interventions in text and source code files. It is useless for development.

Alternatives are GNU Nano or, even better, Micro

As mentioned at the beginning, a text editor in the text console is nevertheless occasionally very practical. Often the dinosaurs Emacs and Vim or the modern Helix are quickly brought into the field, which are true feature monsters, but inherently use cryptic and countless keyboard shortcuts. It is almost impossible to remember these if you only use the programs occasionally.

However, there are practical alternatives. The slim GNU Nano has been established for some time, although it uses keyboard shortcuts that take some getting used to for Windows users. However, it is installed on every Linux system.

Micro, with which this text was also written, is even better for Windows users. Micro has everything you could wish for in a modern editor and offers this on Windows, Mac and Linux alike. The editor is also free and open source and can be installed under Windows with the one-liner winget install micro. The good thing is: Unlike some Linux ports, this editor is not a huge feature grab with cryptic key controls.

By default, the keys are assigned as you would expect: Ctrl+S saves, Ctrl+O opens a file, Ctrl+Q closes the window. Ctrl+C, +V and +X work as usual; Ctrl+F starts the search. Arrows, page keys, Pos1 and End and other extra keys also work as expected. The mouse can be used to highlight text and the mouse wheel can be used to scroll through the text. Micro is programmed in Go and is just as fast as Microsoft's Edit.

So if you only start the editor from time to time to adjust something in a text file, you don't have to remember or get used to anything. However, if you want to use it more often, you can make use of many functions:

• Syntax highlighting for many text formats (HTML, JSON, Markdown, Ini files) and programming languages (130 in total)
• Split views (horizontal and vertical) and tabs
• Multiple cursors and vertical blocks
• Easily customizable keyboard layout
• Macro recorder
• Multiple undo and redo
• Plug-in interface for function extensions
• Themes for color selection and labeling

The program includes detailed help with a short tutorial in English, which can be accessed by pressing Ctrl+G and explains how to reassign keys. There are around thirty official plug-ins, some of which are pre-installed by default. Plug-ins can be written in the Lua language, the necessary interpreter is built into Micro. The built-in help offers support here too.

Conclusion

The new Edit from Microsoft is more of a marketing stunt than a serious editor. The version number should be 0.1 rather than 1.1.0. Instead of creating another open source tool that does next to nothing, it would have been better to simply include a mature open source application like Micro in Windows 10 and 11. But hey: Micro is only a call away. It's definitely worth trying out.

(vbr)