MS-DOS Editor, commonly just called edit, is a character-based text editor that comes with MS-DOS (since version 5) and 32-bit versions of Microsoft Windows. It superseded edlin, the standard editor in earlier versions.
Until MS-DOS 6.22 it was actually QBasic running in editor mode, but from DOS 7 (Windows 95) QBasic was removed and MS-DOS Editor became a standalone program.
Editor is sometimes used as a substitute for Notepad on Windows 9x, where Notepad is limited to small files only. Editor can edit files that are up to 65,279 lines and up to approximately 5 MB in size. MS-DOS versions are limited to approximately 300 KB, depending on how much conventional memory is free. Editor can be launched by typing it into the Run command dialog on Windows, and by typing edit into the command-line interface. Edit is still included in later versions of Windows such as Windows XP, Windows Vista 32 bit, and Windows 7 32 bit. Being a 16-bit DOS application, it won't directly run on 64-bit Windows versions.
Famous quotes containing the word editor:
“For a long time I was reporter to a journal, of no very wide circulation, whose editor has never yet seen fit to print the bulk of my contributions, and, as is too common with writers, I got only my labor for my pains. However, in this case my pains were their own reward.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)