Kilo Text Editor

Kilo is a minimal text editor written in C, designed to be simple yet functional. It provides basic text editing capabilities with a terminal-based interface.

Features

• Basic text editing operations (insert, delete, move cursor)
• File I/O operations (open, save)
• Search functionality
• Terminal-based UI with status bar
• Support for tabs and special characters
• Scrolling support for large files
• Unsaved changes protection

Code Structure

The codebase is organized into several key sections:

1. Includes and Defines

• Standard C library includes for basic functionality
• Custom defines for editor configuration
• Special key codes for editor navigation

2. Data Structures

• erow: Represents a row in the editor
  • Stores both raw characters and rendered characters (with tabs expanded)
  • Maintains size information for both raw and rendered content
• editorConfig: Global editor configuration
  • Cursor position and screen dimensions
  • File information and status
  • Terminal settings

3. Terminal Functions

• Raw mode handling for direct terminal input
• Terminal size detection
• Cursor position management
• Error handling

4. Row Operations

• Row manipulation (insert, delete, update)
• Tab handling and rendering
• Position conversion between cursor and render coordinates

5. File I/O

• File opening and saving
• String conversion for file operations
• Error handling for file operations

6. Find Functionality

• Text search with navigation
• Search result highlighting
• Directional search support

7. Output Functions

• Screen rendering
• Status bar and message display
• Scrolling implementation
• Cursor positioning

8. Input Handling

• Key press processing
• Special key handling
• Command processing

Key Commands

• Ctrl-S: Save file
• Ctrl-Q: Quit editor (requires multiple presses if there are unsaved changes)
• Ctrl-F: Search in file
• Arrow keys: Navigate
• Home/End: Move to start/end of line
• Page Up/Down: Scroll up/down

Building and Running

Build the editor:

make

Building without make, C23 can be replaced with your version of C

cc kilo.c -o kilo -Wall -Wextra -pedantic -std=c23

To run the editor with an existing file:

./kilo [filename]

Or to run the editor without any input file

./kilo 

Dependencies

The editor requires a POSIX-compliant system with the following headers:

• termios.h
• sys/ioctl.h
• unistd.h

Acknowledgements

This project is based on Salvatore Sanfilippo's (antirez) Kilo - A Text Editor in 1000 lines of C code. An excellent tutorial for this project was made by Jeremy Ruten (snaptoken) here.

• Original Project, Blog Post by Antirez
• Tutorial for the project

License

The original project by Salvatore Sanfilippo (antirez) and the tutorial by Jeremy Ruten (snaptoken) are both licensed under the BSD 2-Clause License. This repository is also licensed under the BSD 2-Clause License.