What's a good script editor?

[user.1]

I've only been shown this vi editor which I found a terrible design.
We have enough things to think about creating scripts besides having to navigate a difficult editor.
I've used notepad to write scripts but the cut and paste can be an issue, and the keyboard shortcuts are a bit too much to remember.
Not to mention some of the colours can be almost impossible to read.
And then there's that backspace and delete action I just can't get used to.

There must be another less complicated way to edit / create scripts. Like the old DOS edit.exe was much more advanced as an editor I reckon.

[daark.child]

You are spolit for choice when it comes to editors. You can use vi/m, emacs, pico/nano (much easier than vim and emacs in my opinion), KATE, Gedit and many more. KATE and Gedit are GUI editors.

[oz]

I've only been shown this vi editor which I found a terrible design.

Welcome to the forums, user.1!

You have to use vi/m for a while to understand why it works the way it does. The huge majority of those that have done so would argue with you about it having a terrible design. It's quite powerful and fast to work with once you take the time to familiarize yourself with it. I'll certainly admit that it's not overly new-user friendly.

For more editor options, take a look at these two sites:

Linux App Finder | Helping find the Linux apps you need

The table of equivalents / replacements / analogs of Windows software in Linux. (Official site of the table)

Hope you are able to find something that suits your tastes for editing.

[techieMoe]

Welcome to the forums, user.1!

You have to use vi/m for a while to understand why it works the way it does. The huge majority of those that have done so would argue with you about it having a terrible design.

I wouldn't. You can't spell evil without VI. But that's just my opinion.

It's quite powerful and fast to work with once you take the time to familiarize yourself with it. I'll certainly admit that it's not overly new-user friendly.

However I will certainly agree with this. Vi isn't the most intuitive editor out there but it can do an awful lot once you learn how to use it, and it's about the only editor that's guaranteed to be installed on just about any Linux or UNIX environment you encounter. I may think it's evil, but it's a necessary evil.

[hugortega]

"The best editor" is a completely relative topic... As a developer and sys admin, I tried dozens of editors, and now I'm using at least five, depends of the task... vi and emacs are powerful but difficult for newbies... If you're looking a generic editor for multiple scripting languages and a GUI with more or less standard features, kate, gedit, scite or nedit are good choices.

[i92guboj]

I've only been shown this vi editor which I found a terrible design.

I completely agree that vi might not be the most intuitive thing. In fact, I happily forgot how to use it since my university days, because I simply can't stand it (believe me, I have tried in many occassions, but I just refuse to learn something that's not natural for me unless I strictly need it).

It's learning curve is very hard at the begining. That's not a secret.

We have enough things to think about creating scripts besides having to navigate a difficult editor.
I've used notepad to write scripts but the cut and paste can be an issue, and the keyboard shortcuts are a bit too much to remember.

I suppose that it just depends on how your brain handle the things. Some people might be compatible with vim, some others (sigh) might even be compatible with emacs The rest of us -mere mortals- are damned to go errand forever, searching for the editor that will free us :P

Fortunately, there's a plethora of text editor of all kinds for every linux user.

Not to mention some of the colours can be almost impossible to read.

This is configurable, and depends more on the terminal or console configuration than it does in the proper editor. That is, if you are using text mode editors. Graphical ones might have their own palete of colors.

There must be another less complicated way to edit / create scripts. Like the old DOS edit.exe was much more advanced as an editor I reckon.

However, just last paragraph was, at least, hillarious

To compare the old dos edit.exe to vim is like to compare a bike with a rocket, even if you hate vim as much as I do. Check the package manager for your distro, and look there for editors. Surely your package manager has a way to show you info about the packages before installing them, amongst that info, you should find a link to the home site of each editor, visit it, see some screenshots and install many of these editors until you find one that is suitable for you.

I personally recommend kate and bluefish as full blown editors for graphics environments. Or just nano for the command line, or mcedit (it comes with midnight commander -mc-). But your tastes might differ.

If you preffer something more DOS-like, you might like this one:

Minimum Profit

[drl]

Hi.

The tables at Comparison of text editors - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia might be useful. It may take some time to go through them, but try to think of all the criteria you consider important beforehand (cross-platform? regular expressions? programmable? rectangular selection? etc.) and you should be able to narrow the field ... cheers, drl