Text Editor - Typical Features

Typical Features

• String searching algorithm – search string with a replacement string. Different methods are employed, Global(ly) Search And Replace, Conditional Search and Replace, Unconditional Search and Replace.
• Cut, copy, and paste – most text editors provide methods to duplicate and move text within the file, or between files.
• Text formatting – Text editors often provide basic formatting features like line wrap, auto-indentation, bullet list formatting, comment formatting, and so on.
• Undo and redo – As with word processors, text editors will provide a way to undo and redo the last edit. 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.
• 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.
• Ability to handle UTF-8 encoded text.
• 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, and so on.
• Syntax highlighting – contextually highlights software code and other text that appears in an organized or predictable format.