MS-DOS Editor
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| MS-DOS Editor | |
|---|---|
 The MS-DOS Editor interface (version 1.1, from MS-DOS 6.22.) |
|
| Developed by | Microsoft Corporation |
| Initial release | June 1991 |
| Latest release | 2.0.026 / 1995 |
| OS | MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows |
| Genre | Text editor |
| License | Proprietary EULA |
 |
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2008) |
MS-DOS Editor is a text editor that comes with MS-DOS (since version 5) and 32-bit versions of Microsoft Windows. Originally (up to MS-DOS 6.22) it was just a short stub that started QBasic in editor mode. Since DOS 7 (Windows 95), QBasic was removed and the MS-DOS Editor became a standalone program. Although it kept the COM file extension for compatibility, it is actually an EXE.[1]
Editor is sometimes used as a substitute for Notepad on Windows 9x, where Notepad is limited to small files only. Editor can edit files that are up to 65,279 lines and up to approximately 5MB in size (MS-DOS versions are limited to approximately 300–400KB, depending on how much conventional memory is free). Editor can be launched by typing it into the Run command dialog on Windows, and by typing edit into the command line interface (usually cmd.exe).
The MS-DOS Editor, either in stand-alone form or as part of QBASIC, is backward compatible with DOS releases prior to 5.0 (down to at least DOS 3.20). However, if used on any 8088/8086 computers, or on some 80286 computers, the Editor-within-QBASIC version may run very slow, or perhaps not at all, due to the memory size of the QBASIC program. However, the newer, stand-alone Editor will not run on a 8088/8086 machine at all since it contains 80286-instructions. Some small DOS memory can be saved by launching the old, Editor-within-QBASIC, not from EDIT.COM but with the command QBASIC /Edit.
[edit] Features
- Windows 9x versions can edit up to 9 files at a time (DOS versions are limited to a single file at a time). The screen can be split vertically into 2 windows, each of which can display a different file.
- Customizable color scheme
- Files can be opened in "binary mode", where a fixed number of characters are displayed per line, and newlines are treated as any other character.
- Unix newlines are converted to DOS newlines.
- text user interface
- Mouse support
Some of these features were added only in 1995 (version 2.0), with the release of Windows 95.
[edit] Limitations
- Outside of binary mode, tabs get converted to spaces, and UNIX newlines are converted to DOS newlines.
- Does not support Unicode.
- DOS versions (for MS-DOS 6.22 and older) lack proper support for binary files, multiple files and are limited to using only the first 640KB of RAM, like any other MS-DOS real mode program.
- Does not directly support USB printers, this can be fixed by adding it as a network printer though.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ What's the difference between the COM and EXE extensions?. The Old New Thing.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
