Kilo Editor

Overview

Kilo Editor is a simple text editor written in C++ for educational purposes. It is a pseudo-follow-along of the snaptoken's kilo tutorial from Paige Ruten based on antirez's kilo editor.

Both the tutorial, and the original kilo editor is written in pure C with no dependencies. For my own interest, this version of the kilo editor is completely written in modern C++(C++20) with minimal dependencies.

Features

• Basic Text Editing: essential text editing functionalities such as insertion, deletion, and navigation.
• Syntax Highlighting: basic syntax highlighting for C/C++
• Incremental Searching: incremental searching functionality and search results navigation

Special Attributes

• Using my implementation of string data structure str instead of <string> from the STL:
  • implementation of <string> member functions such as:
  • replace
  • erase
  • find
  • rfind
  • compare
  • insert
  • append
  • push_back
  • pop_back
  • iterator support: fully supports iterator-functions from the STL
• Heavy use of modern C++ paradigms:
  • RAII: for completely avoiding manual management of memory allocation
  • move-semantic: for avoiding unnecessary copies of data
  • template methods: for compile-time branching based on argument type
  • constant expressions
  • lambda functions
• Adhering to the best practices of writing modern C++ such as:
  • copy-and-swap idiom
  • the rule of zero or the rule of five

Dependencies

• Minimal use of The C++ Standard Library: for functions from headers such as <unistd>, <ctype>, <algorithm>, <format> etc.

Example output of ldd <kilo binary>

linux-vdso.so.1 (0x00007fffc37fc000)
libstdc++.so.6 => /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6 (0x00007fc808800000)
libm.so.6 => /usr/lib/libm.so.6 (0x00007fc80980b000)
libresolv.so.2 => /usr/lib/libresolv.so.2 (0x00007fc8097fa000)
libgcc_s.so.1 => /usr/lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00007fc8097d5000)
libc.so.6 => /usr/lib/libc.so.6 (0x00007fc80861e000)
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 => /usr/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007fc809918000)

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• C++ compiler (C++11 or later)
• make

Building

make

Running

Run the compiled executable: ./bin/kilo

Usage

• Text Editing: Open the editor and start typing. Use arrow keys to navigate, and press Ctrl-Q to quit.
• Searching: Press Ctrl-F to initiate a search. Enter the desired word, and use the arrow keys (UP and DOWN) to cycle through search results.

Acknowledgments

• The Kilo Editor is based on the work of antirez, the original creator of Kilo.
• Special thanks to the Paige Ruten for the amazing follow-along tutorial!

Disclaimer

This project is intended for educational purposes only. Use it responsibly and at your own risk.