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EDLIN has been removed for quite some time, its successor, EDIT.COM, has not survived the let’s-get-rid-of-efficient-software Windows XP era either.



Pre-windows 95, EDIT.COM was actually QBASIC.EXE running with the command line switch /EDIT.

Really annoying, as it meant that if you wanted a native TUI editor on an MS-DOS book disk, you had to shoe-horn the larger QBASIC.EXE on to it somehow just to be able to edit config files.


This was so annoying that I built a stand-alone clone of edit using VB for MSDOS. Unfortunately after compiling it was larger than QBASIC :(


I believe EDIT.COM is still there in all 32-bit versions of Windows, but since it's a 16-bit application, none of the 64-bit versions have it.

More unusually, Win9x doesn't have EDLIN, but it seems the 32-bit versions of NT-based Windows do.


That's a shame, I had a happy few minutes remembering assembling binaries via debug.com which was the other way of creating files back then.


I definitely remember windows having some built in terminal editor during Windows XP. Maybe EDIT was removed after then.


EDIT was dropped with 64-bit.


I think EDIT.COM was 16-bit so couldn't survive the 64-bit transition.


I still casually use copy con in windows. Sometimes i forget which is the save shortcut. I think ctrl-z, right?

I also fondly remember edit.com, too bad it didnt survive..


Ctrl+Z would work, or F6.


Nice, i didnt know about f6


To be pedantic ctrl-z inserts an eof, which tells copy to stop reading input from the console.




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