MS-DOS Editor
text editor in MS-DOS and Windows 9x
MS-DOS Editor, commonly just called edit or edit.com, is a TUI text editor. Originally, it was a 16-bit application that shipped with MS-DOS 5.0 and later, as well as all 32-bit x86 versions of Windows. It supersedes edlin, the standard editor in earlier versions of MS-DOS. Originally, EDIT.COM was a stub that ran QBasic in editor mode. Starting with Windows 95, MS-DOS Editor became a standalone program because QBasic did not ship with Windows. In 2025, Microsoft released a free and open-source remake.
Overview
Original
The Editor version 1.0 appeared in MS-DOS 5.00, IBM PC DOS 5.0, OS/2, and Windows NT 4.0. This version relies on QBasic 1.0. Hence, it uses a text-based user interface (TUI), and its color scheme can be adjusted. It can only open one file, but can open the quick help file in a split window.
The Editor version 1.1 appeared in MS-DOS 6.0.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1066510. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2025.
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This entry incorporates text from “MS-DOS Editor” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.