cedit

cedit is a small terminal text editor written in C. The goal of this project is learning — understanding how applications are built at a low level, how terminal input works, and how state is managed manually without external frameworks.

This is an educational project, not a production editor.

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Installation

Linux (Binary Install – Recommended)

This will download and install the latest release for your architecture.

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Avinash-sord12k/cedit/main/scripts/install.sh | bash

After installation:

cedit filename.txt

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Other Platforms / Unsupported Architectures

If your OS or architecture is not supported by the binary installer, build from source.

Option 1: Use Source Install Script

git clone https://github.com/Avinash-sord12k/cedit
cd cedit
./scripts/source-install.sh

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Option 2: Manual Build

git clone https://github.com/Avinash-sord12k/cedit
cd cedit

make
sudo cp dist/cedit /usr/local/bin/cedit

Then run:

cedit filename.txt

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Upgrade

Re-running the install command will automatically:

• Detect the installed version
• Compare with the latest release
• Upgrade if necessary

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Avinash-sord12k/cedit/main/scripts/install.sh | bash

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Uninstall

To remove cedit from your system:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Avinash-sord12k/cedit/main/scripts/install.sh | bash -s uninstall

Or manually:

sudo rm /usr/local/bin/cedit

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Purpose

This project exists to explore:

• raw terminal mode
• keyboard input parsing
• manual screen rendering
• dynamic memory management
• basic editor architecture in C

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Current Features

• Open a file from command line (filename is mandatory)

• Load file content into an editable buffer

• Edit ASCII text

• Insert characters and new lines

• Backspace delete

• Cursor movement (left / right)

• Copy current line

• Paste from clipboard

• Save file with Ctrl + S

• Quit with Ctrl + Q

• Dirty state tracking

• Status bar showing:

  • filename
  • modified state
  • character count
  • temporary status message

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Limitations / Missing Features

This is intentionally minimal. Many things are not implemented yet:

• No scrolling
• No syntax highlighting
• No mouse support
• No multi-line cursor navigation (up/down still basic)
• No undo / redo
• No search
• No selections
• Rendering is still simple and not optimized
• ASCII-only editing

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Notes

This editor is intentionally small. The goal is to understand how editors work internally rather than to compete with existing tools.