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is there any command line editor like the old edit for windows x64?. I exclude VIM because i don't like the mode behavior. I would like a editor were i could write just as i write in any application. I don't want to learn another language to just edit a file. (I already learn Autohotkey so i could edit very very fast even in the simple notepad. The factor that is more important to me is use the same pattern, the same hotkeys, in every edition task perhaps the use of different programs i.e. -notepad,visualstudio,scite,powershellise,etc-, with AUTOHOTKEY i already achieve that, so the only thing that i miss is a simple command line editor)

The requisite could be summarize as: the program must don't invent weird and special hotkeys for things that already have a meaning, example: shift + arrowkeys, ctrl + arrow keys, ctrl+shift+arrows

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marked as duplicate by Karan, techie007, Renan, terdon, Paul Feb 17 '13 at 23:15


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3 Answers

Personally I like to use Nano which has a Windows binary available: http://www.nano-editor.org/download.php

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wow, i'm using it right now. Till the moment is just what i exactly need it, in other words, perfect. :) –  mjsr Feb 26 '11 at 0:23
ooooooo nooo!!, i found the first thing that breaks the normal behavior of any text editor, special hotkeys that don't behave normal as other text editor : shift + (arrows keys) selection, ctrl+(arrows) is for movement between words, ctrl+shift+(arrows key) words selections.... the list is still growing, damn i'm thinking that i'm not going to find a "simple" editor, that don't invent special hotkeys –  mjsr Feb 26 '11 at 0:42
Control+K for Cut, Control + U for paste ;) –  JonnyReeves Feb 26 '11 at 1:18
i don't like to have different hotkeys and patterns for every program. Im trying to minimize at maximum the differences, and establish one unified way to edit things no matter what program. –  mjsr Feb 26 '11 at 15:13
Might as well get used to Nano. Sooner or later you will be on a Linux or Unix machine, and there it is pretty well the standard command line editor. Nano works fine in XP and W7. It is ideal for quickly writing some bats. Nano comes from the UNIX world and is a totally clean text editor for command line work and shell scripts, and occasionally for editing typos or copyright dates on web pages. If you are worried, that wrong line ends might mess you up, use Nano. If you are coming from UNIX and are used to Pico, don't worry. Nano is the modern version of Pico. –  user129012 Apr 18 '12 at 23:04
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What you're actually looking for is a TUI text editor, usable on x86/64 Microsoft Windows, that adheres to the Common User Access derived interface conventions for keyboard menu shortcuts, such as Control+Insert for "copy" Shift+Delete for "cut" and so forth. And what you're discovering is the reason that the Common User Access specifications and their derivatives came to exist in the first place: In the (IBM PC Compatible) world before OS/2 and Windows, when everyone rolled their own TUIs rather than used IBM-supplied/Microsoft-supplied GUI engines, there were no globally accepted keyboard commands for editing actions, or even for simple cursor motions.

Unfortunately, and especially in the world of TUI text editors whose origins lie in Unices and Linux (which includes, as you've seen, clones of the pico editor from Pine), that situation continues to this day. In that world, we're still stuck in the age where there were devotees of the WordStar control keys versus devotees of the WordPerfect control keys, except that it's now vi-versus-emacs-versus-pine-versus-brief. It's almost as if CUA and the user interface developments in the IBM PC Compatible world since the 1980s didn't exist.

Of course, the reason for this is the success of the GUIs, which adhere to the CUA conventions. If you want a text editor with CUA-compliant keyboard shortcuts, there are GUI text editors galore. (You can run notepad myfile.txt from the command line, for example.) But few people have rolled their own CUA-compliant TUIs to make TUI text editors with CUA keyboard commands, and those who did were mainly the corporates who now no longer sell such products and have shifted to selling GUI tools.

However, some (almost) CUA TUI text editors are still available as native Win32 TUI programs, including ones built upon Turbo Vision (which is close to, but not quite, CUA) such as SET's Editor.

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i test the apps in the list but if they are not shareware they dont run in x64. I want an application from this characteristics to do remote things when i don't have access to the GUI. –  mjsr Feb 26 '11 at 20:05
I found the program Multitextor. It behaves exactly like any normal program, the only problem is that i'm unable to write a backslah character. Im searching trough the options but i can't find nothing to fix that weird thing. –  mjsr Feb 26 '11 at 21:14
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up vote 3 down vote accepted

I finally found it, after a very long time, and when no hopes remain, xd... It calls "FarManager". Is like pseudo norton-commander that has the posibility to edit files, and a lot of other cool stuff. The best of all is that is CUA compatible like JdeBP explains in her answer. His official site is FarManager.com. Im very happy of having found this great software.

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