Apps like classic notepad are useful to have around, when apps that try to parse things like markdown get it wrong and the underlying file needs to be fixed.
All I really need is a basic text box with a scroll bar, and a way to feed it with bytes from a file.
To make it a well-defined challenge: the task is to find a way to create a basic notepad - a multi-line textbox that supports scrolling, and can be fed bytes from a file to render as text directly. Additionally, this must be achievable through simple means - simple enough to memorize - and must work on standard Windows 11 installation, with no extra dependencies to procure. Solution can be e.g. something I can type from memory into "Run" (Win+R) box, but could also be a short list of GUI steps (e.g. open some program, click on "Help", drag file to help box).
I can confirm it exists on my Windows 11 machine, and I didn't install it specifically, though it's definitely not a base install (upgraded from Windows 10, and plenty of dev tooling installed over the years). Still, it fits the bill (+/- GUI, but I didn't consider TUI at all). Thanks!
Note that my link is dated 2023, whereas Wikipedia says that Microsoft Edit was first released in 2025: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS_Editor
As someone who (mercifully) only occasionally has to touch Windows machines, I keep forgetting this, and then when I try to do stuff I’m flabbergasted that the operating system does not include a terminal text editor. (In a fit of pure desperation I even typed EDLIN into the Command Prompt — no go ;)
That was the case with Win11 about a year ago; if they finally started shipping EDIT64 then hey, that’s one positive recent change in Windows I suppose.
copy con file_to_edit.txt
That's what web search told me, but then looking at the remarks in docs for `copy`[0], I have to wonder if this works now, and if it would've worked back then:
copy prefix.txt+con+suffix.txt output.txt
(`more` would come in handy here, but AIUI, there's no way to run it non-interactively in cmd.exe? Don't have a Windows machine handy to check it right now.)
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[0] - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administrat...
This does indeed work in proper MS-DOS. Congratulations for figuring out probably the single most masochistic way of accomplishing text editing ;)
So it turns out, EDIT.COM was one of the first - if not the first - computer programs I ever saw and used, back when the first PC showed up in the house. For some reason, someone in the family guessed that 9yo me will be interested in DOS and QBasic. A few years later, I used it from Windows for some time, when I was learning X86 assembly (I wanted to learn how to make a video game, so I went to the local library looking for some "intro to programming" book, and mistakes were made).
Afterwards, it was Borland C++ 3.1 (another TUI classic) and vim/Emacs, and I forgot about EDIT.com entirely. This new Microsoft Edit is something new, and something else, but similar enough that it brought those memories back.
Thanks again!