Source code editor

Last updated February 23, 2019

A source code editor is a text editor program designed specifically for editing source code of computer programs. It may be a standalone application or it may be built into an integrated development environment (IDE) or web browser. Source code editors are a fundamental programming tool, as the fundamental job of programmers is to write and edit source code.

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. 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 language source code.

In computing, source code is any collection of code, possibly with comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source code. The source code is often transformed by an assembler or compiler into binary machine code understood by the computer. The machine code might then be stored for execution at a later time. Alternatively, source code may be interpreted and thus immediately executed.

A computer program is a collection of instructions that performs a specific task when executed by a computer. A computer requires programs to function.

Features

Source code editors have features specifically designed to simplify and speed up typing of source code, such as syntax highlighting, indentation, autocomplete and brace matching functionality. These editors also provide a convenient way to run a compiler, interpreter, debugger, or other program relevant for the software development process. So, while many text editors like Notepad can be used to edit source code, if they don't enhance, automate or ease the editing of code, they are not source code editors.

Syntax highlighting is a feature of text editors that are used for programming, scripting, or markup languages, such as HTML. The feature displays text, especially source code, in different colors and fonts according to the category of terms. This feature facilitates writing in a structured language such as a programming language or a markup language as both structures and syntax errors are visually distinct. Highlighting does not affect the meaning of the text itself; it is intended only for human readers.

Autocomplete, or word completion, is a feature in which an application predicts the rest of a word a user is typing. In graphical user interfaces, users can typically press the tab key to accept a suggestion or the down arrow key to accept one of several.

Brace matching, also known as bracket matching or parentheses matching, is a syntax highlighting feature of certain text editors and integrated development environments that highlights matching sets of braces in languages such as Java and C++ that use them. The purpose is to help the programmer navigate through the code and also spot any improper matching, which would cause the program to not compile or malfunction. If a closing brace is left out, for instance, the compiler will not know that the end of a block of code has been reached. Brace matching is particularly useful when many nested if statements, program loops, etc. are involved.

Structure editors are a different form of source code editor, where instead of editing raw text, one manipulates the code's structure, generally the abstract syntax tree. In this case features such as syntax highlighting, validation, and code formatting are easily and efficiently implemented from the concrete syntax tree or abstract syntax tree, but editing is often more rigid than free-form text. Structure editors also require extensive support for each language, and thus are harder to extend to new languages than text editors, where basic support only requires supporting syntax highlighting or indentation. For this reason, strict structure editors are not popular for source code editing, though some IDEs provide similar functionality.

A structure editor, also structured editor or projectional editor, is any document editor that is cognizant of the document’s underlying structure. Structure editors can be used to edit hierarchical or marked up text, computer programs, diagrams, chemical formulas, and any other type of content with clear and well-defined structure. In contrast, a text editor is any document editor used for editing plain text files.

In computer science, an abstract syntax tree (AST), or just syntax tree, is a tree representation of the abstract syntactic structure of source code written in a programming language. Each node of the tree denotes a construct occurring in the source code. The syntax is "abstract" in the sense that it does not represent every detail appearing in the real syntax, but rather just the structural, content-related details. For instance, grouping parentheses are implicit in the tree structure, and a syntactic construct like an if-condition-then expression may be denoted by means of a single node with three branches.

A source code editor can check syntax while code is being entered and immediately warn of syntax problems. A few source code editors compress source code, typically converting common keywords into single-byte tokens, removing unnecessary whitespace, and converting numbers to a binary form. Such tokenizing editors later uncompress the source code when viewing it, possibly prettyprinting it with consistent capitalizing and spacing. A few source code editors do both.

Prettyprint is the application of any of various stylistic formatting conventions to text files, such as source code, markup, and similar kinds of content. These formatting conventions can adjust positioning and spacing, add color and contrast, adjust size, and make similar modifications intended to make the content easier for people to view, read, and understand. Prettyprinters for programming language source code are sometimes called code beautifier.

Notable examples

Atom
Brackets
Eclipse (cross-platform, including Linux, macOS, Windows)
Emacs (cross-platform, including Unix, Linux, macOS, Windows)
Gedit (cross-platform, including Linux, macOS, Windows)
Microsoft Visual Studio built-in editor (Windows)
NetBeans
Notepad++ (Windows)
SlickEdit (cross-platform, including Linux, macOS, Windows, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX)
Sublime Text (cross-platform, including Linux, macOS, Windows)
TextMate (OS X)
vi/Vim (cross-platform, including Unix, Linux, macOS, Windows)
Visual Studio Code (cross-platform, including Linux, OS X, Windows)
Xcode (OS X)

Atom (text editor) free and open-source text and source code editor

Atom is a free and open-source text and source code editor for macOS, Linux, and Microsoft Windows with support for plug-ins written in Node.js, and embedded Git Control, developed by GitHub. Atom is a desktop application built using web technologies. Most of the extending packages have free software licenses and are community-built and maintained. Atom is based on Electron, a framework that enables cross-platform desktop applications using Chromium and Node.js. It is written in CoffeeScript and Less. It was able to be used as an integrated development environment (IDE), until that feature was 'retired' in December 2018. Atom was released from beta, as version 1.0, on 25 June 2015. Its developers call it a "hackable text editor for the 21st Century".

Brackets is a source code editor with a primary focus on web development. Created by Adobe Systems, it is free and open-source software licensed under the MIT License, and is currently maintained on GitHub by Adobe and other open-sourced developers. It is written in JavaScript, HTML and CSS. Brackets is cross-platform, available for macOS, Windows, and most Linux distributions. The main purpose of brackets is its live HTML, CSS and JavaScript editing functionality.

Eclipse is an integrated development environment (IDE) used in computer programming, and is the most widely used Java IDE. It contains a base workspace and an extensible plug-in system for customizing the environment. Eclipse is written mostly in Java and its primary use is for developing Java applications, but it may also be used to develop applications in other programming languages via plug-ins, including Ada, ABAP, C, C++, C#, Clojure, COBOL, D, Erlang, Fortran, Groovy, Haskell, JavaScript, Julia, Lasso, Lua, NATURAL, Perl, PHP, Prolog, Python, R, Ruby, Rust, Scala, and Scheme. It can also be used to develop documents with LaTeX and packages for the software Mathematica. Development environments include the Eclipse Java development tools (JDT) for Java and Scala, Eclipse CDT for C/C++, and Eclipse PDT for PHP, among others.

Controversy

Many source code editors and IDEs have been involved in ongoing user arguments, sometimes referred to jovially as "holy wars" by the programming community. Notable examples include vi vs. Emacs and Eclipse vs. NetBeans. These arguments have formed a significant part of internet culture and they often start whenever either editor is mentioned anywhere.

Editor war is the common name for the rivalry between users of the Emacs and vi text editors. The rivalry has become a lasting part of hacker culture and the free software community.

NetBeans is an integrated development environment (IDE) for Java. NetBeans allows applications to be developed from a set of modular software components called modules. NetBeans runs on Windows, macOS, Linux and Solaris. In addition to Java development, it has extensions for other languages like PHP, C, C++, HTML5, and JavaScript. Applications based on NetBeans, including the NetBeans IDE, can be extended by third party developers.

Internet culture, or cyberculture, is the culture that has emerged, or is emerging, from the use of computer networks for communication, entertainment, and business. Internet culture is also the study of various social phenomena associated with the Internet and other new forms of the network communication, such as online communities, online multi-player gaming, wearable computing, social gaming, social media, mobile apps, augmented reality, and texting, and includes issues related to identity, privacy, and network formation.

Related Research Articles

Integrated development environment software application used to develop software

An integrated development environment (IDE) is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development. An IDE normally consists of a source code editor, build automation tools, and a debugger. Most of the modern IDEs have intelligent code completion. Some IDEs, such as NetBeans and Eclipse, contain a compiler, interpreter, or both; others, such as SharpDevelop and Lazarus, do not. The boundary between an integrated development environment and other parts of the broader software development environment is not well-defined. Sometimes a version control system, or various tools to simplify the construction of a graphical user interface (GUI), are integrated. Many modern IDEs also have a class browser, an object browser, and a class hierarchy diagram, for use in object-oriented software development.

Vim (text editor) Improved version of the Vi keyboard-oriented text editor

Vim is a clone, with additions, of Bill Joy's vi text editor program for Unix. It was written by Bram Moolenaar based on source for a port of the Stevie editor to the Amiga and first released publicly in 1991. Vim is designed for use both from a command-line interface and as a standalone application in a graphical user interface. Vim is free and open-source software and is released under a license that includes some charityware clauses, encouraging users who enjoy the software to consider donating to children in Uganda. The license is compatible with the GNU General Public License through a special clause allowing distribution of modified copies "under the GNU GPL version 2 or any later version".

vi is a screen-oriented text editor originally created for the Unix operating system. The portable subset of the behavior of vi and programs based on it, and the ex editor language supported within these programs, is described by the Single Unix Specification and POSIX.

Code folding is a feature of some text editors, source code editors, and IDEs that allows the user to selectively hide and display – "fold" – sections of a currently edited file as a part of routine edit operations. This allows the user to manage large amounts of text while viewing only those subsections of the text that are specifically relevant at any given time.

UltraEdit is a commercial text editor for Microsoft Windows, Linux and OS X created in 1994 by the founder of IDM Computer Solutions Inc., Ian D. Mead. The editor contains tools for programmers, including macros, configurable syntax highlighting, code folding, file type conversions, project management, regular expressions for search-and-replace, a column-edit mode, remote editing of files via FTP, interfaces for APIs or command lines of choice, and more. Files can be browsed and edited in tabs, and it also supports Unicode and hex editing mode.

vile is a text editor that attempts to combine the best aspects of the popular Emacs and vi editors. These editors are traditionally located on opposing sides of the editor wars, as users of Emacs and vi tend to have strong sentiments against the editor they do not use; however, vile at least attempts to reconcile these positions.

Notepad++ is a text editor and source code editor for use with Microsoft Windows. It supports tabbed editing, which allows working with multiple open files in a single window. The project's name comes from the C increment operator.

This article provides basic comparisons for common text editors. More feature details for text editors are available from the Category of text editor features and from the individual products' articles. This article may not be up-to-date or necessarily all-inclusive.

SlickEdit, previously known as Visual SlickEdit, is a cross-platform commercial source code editor, text editor, code editor and Integrated Development Environment developed by SlickEdit, Inc. SlickEdit supports Integrated Debuggers for GNU C/C++, Java, WinDbg, Clang C/C++ LLDB, Groovy, Google Go, Python, Perl, Ruby, PHP, Xcode, and Android JVM/NDK. SlickEdit includes such features as built in beautifiers that can beautify code as you type, code navigation, context tagging, symbol references, third party tool integration, DiffZilla, syntax highlighting, and over 13 keyboard emulations.

JED is a text editor that makes extensive use of the S-Lang library. It is highly cross-platform compatible; JED runs on Windows and all flavors on Linux and Unix. Older versions are available for DOS. It is also very lightweight, which makes it an ideal editor for older systems, embedded systems, etc. JED's Emacs mode is one of the most faithful emulations available.

Geany (IPA:ʒeːniː) is a lightweight GUI text editor using Scintilla and GTK+, including basic IDE features. It is designed to have short load times, with limited dependency on separate packages or external libraries on Linux. It has been ported to a wide range of operating systems, such as BSD, Linux, macOS, Solaris and Windows. The Windows port lacks an embedded terminal window; also missing from the Windows version are the external development tools present under Unix, unless installed separately by the user. Among the supported programming languages and markup languages are C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, PHP, HTML, LaTeX, CSS, Python, Perl, Ruby, Pascal, Haskell, Erlang, Vala and many others.

ne is a console text editor for POSIX computer operating systems such as Linux or Mac OS X. It uses the terminfo library, but it can also be compiled using a bundled copy of the GNU termcap implementation. There is also a Cygwin version. It was developed by Sebastiano Vigna of the University of Milan.

GNU Emacs GNU version of the Emacs text editor

GNU Emacs is the most popular and most ported Emacs text editor. It was created by GNU Project founder Richard Stallman. In common with other varieties of Emacs, GNU Emacs is extensible using a Turing complete programming language. GNU Emacs has been called "the most powerful text editor available today". With proper support from the underlying system, GNU Emacs is able to display files in multiple character sets, and has been able to simultaneously display most human languages since at least 1999. Throughout its history, GNU Emacs has been a central component of the GNU project, and a flagship of the free software movement. GNU Emacs is sometimes abbreviated as GNUMACS, especially to differentiate it from other EMACS variants. The tag line for GNU Emacs is "the extensible self-documenting text editor".

CodeLite is a free and open-source IDE for the C, C++, PHP, and JavaScript (Node.js) programming languages.

The Wing Python IDE family of integrated development environments (IDEs) from Wingware was created specifically for the Python programming language. These lightweight but full-featured Python IDEs are designed to speed up writing, debugging, and testing code, to reduce the incidence of coding errors, and to make it easier to understand and navigate Python code.

Emmet is a set of plug-ins for text editors that allow for high-speed coding and editing in HTML, XML, XSL, and other structured code formats via content assist. The project was started by Vadim Makeev in 2008 and continues to be actively developed by Sergey Chikuyonok and Emmet users. Since 2015 Mikael Geletsyan is responsible for UX at Emmet. The tools have been incorporated into several popular text editors, as well as some plug-ins developed by the Emmet team and others implemented independently. However, Emmet is primarily independent from any text editor, as the engine works directly with text rather than with any particular software.

CudaText, from Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian čuda, is a free open source cross-platform native GUI text and source code editor. CudaText supersedes its predecessor SynWrite, which is not actively developed anymore.

References

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