Question

I’m fairly new at programming, but I’ve wondered how shell text editors such as vim, emacs, nano, etc are able to control the command-line window. I’m primarily a Windows programmer, so maybe it’s different on *nix. As far as I know, it’s only possible to print text to a console, and ask for input. How do text editors create a navigable, editable window in a command line environment?

Answer 1

By using libraries such as the following which, in turn, use escape character sequences

 NAME        ncurses - CRT screen handling and optimization package  SYNOPSIS        #include   DESCRIPTION        The  ncurses library routines give the user a terminal-independent  method of updating character screens with reasonable optimization.  This  implementation is ‘‘new curses’’ (ncurses) and is the approved replacement  for 4.4BSD classic curses, which has been discontinued.  [...snip....]         The ncurses package supports: overall screen, window and pad  manipulation; output to windows and pads; reading terminal input; control  over terminal and curses input and output  options;  environment query  routines; color manipulation; use of soft label keys; terminfo capabilities;  and access to low-level terminal-manipulation routines.