mle
v1.7.2
mle is a small, flexible, terminal-based text editor written in C.
Runs on Linux, Windows (Cygwin or WSL), FreeBSD, macOS, and more.
$ sudo apt install git build-essential # install git, make, gcc, libc-dev
$
$ git clone --recursive https://github.com/adsr/mle.git
$ cd mle
$ make mle_vendor=1
To build a completely static binary, try make mle_vendor=1 mle_static=1.
You can also run plain make to link against system libraries instead of
vendor/. Note this requires the following packages to be installed:
uthash-dev
liblua5.4-dev
libpcre2-dev
To install to /usr/local/bin:
$ make install
To install to a custom directory, supply prefix, e.g.:
$ make install prefix=/usr # /usr/bin/mle
mle may be available to install via your system's package manager.
# apt install mle # Ubuntu and Debian-based distros
# dnf install mle # CentOS, RHEL, Fedora-based distros
# pkg install mle # FreeBSD
# yay -S mle # Arch (via AUR)
# snap install mle # all major Linux distros
# nix-env -i mle # NixOS (via nixpkgs)
# apk add mle # Alpine
# xbps-install mle # Void
# brew install mle # macOS (Homebrew)
# port install mle # macOS (MacPorts)
# setup-x86.exe -q -P mle # Cygwin
$ mle # Open blank buffer
$ mle one.c # Edit one.c
$ mle one.c:100 # Edit one.c at line 100
$ mle one.c two.c # Edit one.c and two.c
$ mle -h # Show command line help
The default key bindings are intuitive. Input text as normal, use directional
keys to move around, use Ctrl-S to save, Ctrl-O to open, Ctrl-X to exit.
Press F2 for full help.
mle is customized via command line options. Run mle -h to view all cli
options.
To set default options, make an rc file named ~/.mlerc (or /etc/mlerc). The
contents of the rc file are any number of cli options separated by newlines.
Lines that begin with a semi-colon are interpretted as comments.
If ~/.mlerc is executable, mle executes it and interprets the resulting stdout
as described above. For example, consider the following snippet from an
executable ~/.mlerc bash(1) script:
# Define 'test' kmap
echo '-Ktest,,1'
# M-q: replace grep with git grep if `.git` exists
if [ -d ".git" ]; then
echo '-kcmd_grep,M-q,git grep --color=never -P -i -I -n %s 2>/dev/null'
fi
# Set default kmap
echo '-n test'
This overrides the built-in grep command with git grep if .git exists in
the current working directory.
The following programs will enable or enhance certain features of mle if they
exist in PATH.
Arbitrary shell commands can also be run via cmd_shell (M-e by default). If
any text is selected, it is sent to stdin of the command. Any resulting stdout
is inserted into the text buffer.
mle provides support for non-interactive editing which may be useful for using the editor as a regular command line tool. In headless mode, mle reads stdin into a buffer, applies a startup macro if specified, and then writes the buffer contents to stdout. For example:
$ echo -n hello | mle -M 'test C-e space w o r l d enter' -p test
hello world
If stdin is a pipe, mle goes into headless mode automatically. Headless mode can
be explicitly enabled or disabled with the -H option.
If stdin is a pipe and headless mode is disabled via -H0, mle reads stdin into
a new buffer and then runs as normal in interactive mode.
mle is extensible via the Lua programming language.
Scripts are loaded via the -x cli option. Commands registered by scripts can
be mapped to keys as normal via -k. See uscript.lua for a simple example.
There is also a wren branch with Wren scripting support.
That work is on pause.
mle makes extensive use of the following libraries.
