What is a text editor?
A text editor is a simple computer program which allows users to create, change, or edit plain text files. Text editors can be used for creating computer programs, editing the source code of programming languages, editing hypertext markup language (HTML), and creating web pages or web design templates. They are most commonly used today for programming purposes, rather than creating documents, as they were in the past. Only plain text may be entered into a text editor, as opposed to the formatted text of a rich text editor or word processor. These programs allow special functions such as bold, italic, and various text sizes and fonts. A text editor displays only the characters visible in the file, while word processors add special formatting characters which are not visible in the document. In a plain text editor, the ability to format text, and add pictures or tables is absent. Most modern computers come with a text editor installed, usually of the most basic sort. There are also numer
A text editor is used to edit plain text files. Text editors differ from word processors, such as Microsoft Word or WordPerfect, in that they do not add additional formatting information to documents. You might write a paper in Word, because it contains tools to change fonts, margins, and layout, but Word by default puts that formatting and layout information directly into the file, which will confuse the compiler. If you open a .doc file in a text editor, you will notice that most of the file is formatting codes. Text editors, however, do not add formatting codes, which makes it easier to compile your code.