Wasn’t there a lurking edit.exe or edit.cmd somewhere inside C:\WINDOWS\system32? Would make an interesting replacement to the enshittified “Not-e-pad”. But, then, I haven’t used Windows since Windows 10 was still a novelty (and what definitely pushed me to Linux… Arch Linux btw), so maybe I’m very old (“I’m old, Dean, very old”) to recall of a MS-DOS relic.
Oh, I misremembered the file extension. Yeah, that’s right, it was edit.com, there was likely no .exe because it was a relic from before Windows NT.
And, BASIC… Such great times. Although the BASIC flavor I dealt the most with was Visual Basic (VB5 and VB6), I also did some tinkering with terminal-based BASIC flavors (specifically, Linux ports of BASIC interpreters) as well.
Good question. I’m not sure. I guess no, because, as far as I know, ed is a GNU editor which allows for composing and editing files in a REPL-like environment (whose specific commands, apart from “q” to quit, I’m yet to learn)
The “edit” I’m referring to was a spiritual antecessor or cousin of vim, emacs and nano. It was a TUI, full with a functional menubar accessible through keyboard arrow keys. I remember it having a blue background with gray/white text.
I remember with quite a certainty it was a thing for Windows XP. Was invokeable by using “edit filename.txt” in cmd.
However, I also remember having manually copied some executables across diferent Windows versions in order to test and see whether these old executables would work. I remember having successfully ran Windows XP’s calc.exe in some later Windows version, relying on the compatibility layer (“ntvdm”, I guess?). I remember doing the same for 16-bit, MS-DOS programs, but I don’t remember whether “edit” MS-DOS programs was included in post-XP Windows versions, or if I manually copied it from XP.
Maybe it’s edit I’m remembering. It was a long time ago, and I stopped using windows seriously around 3.11, so I never paid much attention to what was on that partition. It was only there to run steam (and a few other games).
I suppose I should have switched to a console, but it never even occurred to me at the time.
@[email protected] @[email protected]
Wasn’t there a lurking
edit.exeoredit.cmdsomewhere insideC:\WINDOWS\system32? Would make an interesting replacement to the enshittified “Not-e-pad”. But, then, I haven’t used Windows since Windows 10 was still a novelty (and what definitely pushed me to Linux… Arch Linux btw), so maybe I’m very old (“I’m old, Dean, very old”) to recall of a MS-DOS relic.Yes, DOS had edit.com, all the BASIC stuff I learned was done in it
@[email protected] @[email protected]
Oh, I misremembered the file extension. Yeah, that’s right, it was edit.com, there was likely no .exe because it was a relic from before Windows NT.
And, BASIC… Such great times. Although the BASIC flavor I dealt the most with was Visual Basic (VB5 and VB6), I also did some tinkering with terminal-based BASIC flavors (specifically, Linux ports of BASIC interpreters) as well.
Really all I remember was finding gorillas.bas and playing like the spiritual source of the old scorched earth game…
Wasn’t there a version of ed in DOS at one point? Or am I mis remembering?
That could still lurk somewhere in windows’ maze of directories somewhere…
@[email protected] @[email protected]
Good question. I’m not sure. I guess no, because, as far as I know,
edis a GNU editor which allows for composing and editing files in a REPL-like environment (whose specific commands, apart from “q” to quit, I’m yet to learn)The “edit” I’m referring to was a spiritual antecessor or cousin of vim, emacs and nano. It was a TUI, full with a functional menubar accessible through keyboard arrow keys. I remember it having a blue background with gray/white text.
I remember with quite a certainty it was a thing for Windows XP. Was invokeable by using “edit filename.txt” in cmd.
However, I also remember having manually copied some executables across diferent Windows versions in order to test and see whether these old executables would work. I remember having successfully ran Windows XP’s calc.exe in some later Windows version, relying on the compatibility layer (“ntvdm”, I guess?). I remember doing the same for 16-bit, MS-DOS programs, but I don’t remember whether “edit” MS-DOS programs was included in post-XP Windows versions, or if I manually copied it from XP.
Maybe it’s edit I’m remembering. It was a long time ago, and I stopped using windows seriously around 3.11, so I never paid much attention to what was on that partition. It was only there to run steam (and a few other games).
I suppose I should have switched to a console, but it never even occurred to me at the time.
A 64-bit version of edit seems to be in the works. You can cli install it for now, but MS is promising to include it eventually.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/edit/