Programmer's File Editor is a freeware text editor targeted particularly to the needs of software

Computer software

Computer software, or just software, is a collection of computer programs and related data that provide the instructions for telling a computer what to do and how to do it....

 programmer

Programmer

A programmer, computer programmer or coder is someone who writes computer software. The term computer programmer can refer to a specialist in one area of computer programming or to a generalist who writes code for many kinds of software. One who practices or professes a formal approach to...

s. It was written by Alan Phillips of Lancaster University

Lancaster University

Lancaster University, officially The University of Lancaster, is a leading research-intensive British university in Lancaster, Lancashire, England. The university was established by Royal Charter in 1964 and initially based in St Leonard's Gate until moving to a purpose-built 300 acre campus at...

 in the north of England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

.

Development of Programmer's File Editor ceased in 1999, but the program is still in use by some programmers.

Strengths of the editor include:

• easy macro recorder and editor; macros can be saved and assembled into "libraries"
• line breaks, tabs, and other special characters allowed in search and replace
• file type recognition
• using batch file
  Batch file
  In DOS, OS/2, and Microsoft Windows, batch file is the name given to a type of script file, a text file containing a series of commands to be executed by the command interpreter....
  
  s to perform compilation tasks from within the editor
• Customizable screen display; display and other characteristics can be set for specific file types, both pre-fab and user determined
• Multiple document interface (MDI)
  Multiple document interface
  Graphical computer applications with a multiple document interface are those whose windows reside under a single parent window , as opposed to all windows being separate from each other . Such systems often allow child windows to embed other windows inside them as well, creating complex nested...
  
  with tiling and minimizing supported
• Keyboard remapping

Weaknesses of the editor include:

• unique default keyboard shortcuts for search and replace (F2 for search, Shift-F2 for repeat search, F3 for search and replace)
• Tends to lock up when opening unusually long files, or files with excessively long lines (above 16k characters)
• Lack of Unicode support (although this does mean that the characters shown are an accurate representation of the file's actual bytes).

External links

• Programmer's File Editor Home Page