buffalo: a terminal text editor 🦬

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

buffalo is a terminal text editor written in C and built on top of ncurses.

Usage

Compile the program with make, dependencies are the ncurses and pthread libraries. Then run it by passing the name of a file as and argument. The file will be created if it does not already exist:

$ make
$ ./buffalo hello.txt

The editor can be navigated using the arrow keys or scrolled with the mouse.

Configuration

The editor can be configured with a .buffalorc file. The editor first checks for such a file in the current directory, and if not found it looks in the home directory. The configuration file has a simple key/value structure. Here's an example:

build: make
test: make test

This configures the editor to use make as the build command and make test as the test command.

Shortcuts

The following shortcuts are recognized:

Ctrl+S: save
Ctrl+Q: quit
Ctrl+B: build
Ctrl+T: test

Limitations

There are many unimplemented features:

Horizontal scrolling has not been implemented, so characters past the width of the terminal cannot be viewed, but they can be edited.
Tab input has not been implemented

Acknowledgements

This project was built as my final project for CSC-213: Operating Systems at Grinnell College. Some of the initial code was borrowed from Charlie Curtsinger. Slides for my presentation can be found under resources.

micahcantor / buffalo