MS-DOS Editor, commonly just called edit or edit.com, is a TUI

text editor A text editor is a type of computer program that edits plain text. An example of such program is "notepad" software (e.g. Windows Notepad). Text editors are provided with operating systems and software development packages, and can be used to c ...

. Originally, it was a 16-bit that shipped with

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few op ...

5.0 and later, as well as all 32-bit x86 versions of Windows. It supersedes

edlin Edlin is a line editor, and the only text editor provided with early versions of IBM PC DOS, MS-DOS and OS/2. Although superseded in MS-DOS 5.0 and later by the full-screen MS-DOS Editor, and by Notepad in Microsoft Windows, it continued to b ...

, the standard editor in earlier versions of MS-DOS. Originally, EDIT.COM was a stub that ran

QBasic QBasic is an integrated development environment (IDE) and BASIC interpreter, interpreter for a variety of dialects of BASIC which are based on QuickBASIC. Code entered into the IDE is compiled into an intermediate representation (IR), and this ...

in editor mode. Starting with

Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft and the first of its Windows 9x family of operating systems, released to manufacturing on July 14, 1995, and generally to retail on August 24, 1995. Windows 95 merged ...

, MS-DOS Editor became a standalone program because QBasic didn't ship with Windows. In 2025, Microsoft released a free and open-source remake.

Overview

Original

The Editor version 1.0 appeared in

5.00,

IBM PC DOS IBM PC DOS (an acronym for IBM Personal Computer Disk Operating System),Formally known as "The IBM Personal Computer DOS" from versions 1.0 through 3.30, as reported in those versions' respective COMMAND.COM outputs also known as PC DOS or IBM ...

5.0,

OS/2 OS/2 is a Proprietary software, proprietary computer operating system for x86 and PowerPC based personal computers. It was created and initially developed jointly by IBM and Microsoft, under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci, ...

, and Windows NT 4.0. This version relies on

1.0. Hence, it uses a

text-based user interface In computing, text-based user interfaces (TUI) (alternately terminal user interfaces, to reflect a dependence upon the properties of computer terminals and not just text), is a retronym describing a type of user interface (UI) common as an ear ...

(TUI), and its color scheme can be adjusted. It can only open one file, but can open the quick help file in a split window. The Editor version 1.1 appeared in MS-DOS 6.0. It uses QBasic 1.1 but no new features were added to the Editor. IBM PC DOS 6 dropped the Editor in favor of another text editor called E, which supports mouse and menus in version 7.0. The Editor version 2.0 appeared with Windows 95, as standalone app that no longer requires QBasic. It has a multiple-document interface and can open up to 9 files. The screen can be split vertically into two panes which can be used to view two files simultaneously or different parts of the same file. It can also open files in '' binary mode'', where a fixed number of characters are displayed per line, with

newline A newline (frequently called line ending, end of line (EOL), next line (NEL) or line break) is a control character or sequence of control characters in character encoding specifications such as ASCII, EBCDIC, Unicode, etc. This character, or ...

s treated like any other character. This mode shows characters as

hexadecimal Hexadecimal (also known as base-16 or simply hex) is a Numeral system#Positional systems in detail, positional numeral system that represents numbers using a radix (base) of sixteen. Unlike the decimal system representing numbers using ten symbo ...

characters (0-9 and A-F). Editor converts

Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

newlines (LF) to DOS newlines (CRLF) and has

mouse A mouse (: mice) is a small rodent. Characteristically, mice are known to have a pointed snout, small rounded ears, a body-length scaly tail, and a high breeding rate. The best known mouse species is the common house mouse (''Mus musculus'' ...

support. This version has been included with all 32-bit x86 versions. Being a 16-bit DOS app, it cannot run on x64,

IA-64 IA-64 (Intel Itanium architecture) is the instruction set architecture (ISA) of the discontinued Itanium family of 64-bit Intel microprocessors. The basic ISA specification originated at Hewlett-Packard (HP), and was subsequently implemented by ...

, or

ARM64 AArch64, also known as ARM64, is a 64-bit version of the ARM architecture family, a widely used set of computer processor designs. It was introduced in 2011 with the ARMv8 architecture and later became part of the ARMv9 series. AArch64 allows ...

versions of Windows. The Editor may be used as a substitute for

Windows Notepad Windows Notepad is a simple text editor for Microsoft Windows, Windows; it creates and edits plain text documents. It was first released in 1983 to commercialize the computer mouse in MS-DOS. History In May 1983, at the COMDEX computer expo in ...

, although the 16-bit version is limited to files smaller than depending on how much conventional memory is free.

FreeDOS derivative

The

FreeDOS FreeDOS (formerly PD-DOS) is a free software operating system for IBM PC compatible computers. It intends to provide a complete MS-DOS-compatible environment for running Legacy system, legacy software and supporting embedded systems. FreeDOS ca ...

version was developed by Shaun Raven and is licensed under the GPL.

Remake

On May 18, 2025, Microsoft released an open-source recreation of the Editor written in the Rust programming language, simply named Edit, for modern versions of Windows. The version number did not continue, resetting to 1.0.0.

References

External links