Text Editor or IDE supporting many languages

Question

I am looking for a text editor or interactive development environment (IDE) that will support many languages, including but not limited to C, C++, Lisp, Scheme, Fortran, bash, ksh, zsh, m-files (Matlab and Octave).

I use a separate editor for LaTeX and so far I have tried Geany, VIM, Emacs and Notepad++ on Windows.

I write code mainly on Linux, but would like to have a cross-platform editor if possible and I am willing to purchase software if it can meet my demands. So far the best editor, out of the ones I have tried, is VIM but it has a steep learning curve and its GUI is not that helpful. The features I seek apart from these are support for easy commenting in and commenting out with the use of hotkeys and syntax coloring.

Requirements at a glance:

• cross-platform
• syntax highlighting
• easy commenting in/out blocks of texts by the use of hotkeys
• support for multiple programming languages, including but not limited to C, C++, Lisp, Scheme, Fortran, bash, ksh, zsh, m-files
• free is nice, but I am willing to purchase software if it can meet my demands (up to 35$)
• code folding will be nice to have but it is not a must

Answer 1

Atom

Atom is a free open-source text and source code editor for Mac OS X, GNU/Linux, and Windows with support for plug-ins written in Node.js, and embedded Git Control, developed by GitHub. Most of the extending packages have free software licenses and are community-built and maintained. Atom is based on Chromium and written in CoffeeScript. It is used also as an IDE

and know more about Text Editors @ Wikipedia - List of text editors

Answer 2

Sounds like a recipe for eclipse

http://www.eclipse.org/

• runs on multiple platforms
• Support for lots of syntaxes http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/
• free, OSS!
• widely used for C and C++
• fortran support https://eclipse.org/photran/
• scheme support http://sourceforge.net/projects/schemeway/
• matlab support https://code.google.com/a/eclipselabs.org/p/matclipse/
• LISP via multiple plugins, including http://sourceforge.net/projects/dandelion-ecl/
• bash, ksh, other shell: http://toytoygogie.blogspot.com/2010/10/use-shell-editor-for-eclipse-for.html
• Most everything else. Just google eclipse

Eclipse has a huge user community, and plugins for everything.

It is a full blown IDE, with great editor, comment/uncomment, integration to compilers and interpreters, the works!

Answer 3

Like others who have answered, I like and use both Atom and Eclipse. But both are quite bloated and take a lot of memory to run.

You say you've tried Vim... I think you need to try it again. :) It has a lot of keystrokes to learn, but is incredibly powerful. You can also use gVim which adds menus and toolbars for common commands. You can also run a lot of commands from within the environment, and setup indexing of files, thereby making it a quasi IDE. Best of all, ALL your requirements are checked with (g)Vim.

Answer 4

CudaText is app like that. It's simple to middle text editor. Your req's:

• cross-platform: yes
• syntax highlighting: yes
• commenting in/out blocks: yes, commands in Edit menu
• support for programming languages: yes, for 100+ languages, many lexers need to be installed from ZIP files
• freeware
• code folding: yes (for many lexers)

Answer 5

Scite

It meets all of your requirements and is free. It's a nice, light text editor with highlighting for many languages, code folding, shortcuts for commenting out code - either per line or a selection and is available for windows and linux.

Download here: http://www.scintilla.org/SciTEDownload.html