Why Microsoft Rewrote the Classic MS‑DOS Editor in Rust – Meet Edit
Microsoft has open‑sourced a modern Rust rewrite of the classic MS‑DOS Editor, called Edit, which runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, fills the missing default CLI editor on 64‑bit Windows, and offers a tiny, mode‑less, feature‑rich text editing experience that has sparked nostalgic community interest.
Microsoft has open‑sourced a modern rewrite of the classic MS‑DOS Editor, now called “Edit”, rebuilt in Rust and released under the MIT license.
The new editor runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, filling the long‑standing gap of a default command‑line text editor on 64‑bit Windows systems.
Edit is tiny (under 250 KB) and provides a simple, mode‑less interface with mouse support, menu navigation, multi‑file opening (Ctrl + P), find‑and‑replace (Ctrl + R) with case‑sensitive and regex options, and word‑wrap toggled by Alt + Z.
Future plans include integration into Windows 11 via Windows Insider builds.
The project has attracted strong community interest, gaining over 9.9 k stars on GitHub and sparking nostalgic discussion about the original MS‑DOS Editor and its predecessor EDLIN.
Mouse mode support
Multi‑file opening
Find and replace with regex
Automatic word wrap
Source code and releases are available at https://github.com/microsoft/edit.
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