We learned in Chapter 2, Fundamentals – Formats, Types, and Encodings, that text editors are the preferred way of reading and creating text files. This sounds reasonable and makes perfect sense. What we did not really explain back then was that a text editor is sometimes also called a programmer's editor because it has many cool features that help folks such as programmers, as well as data cleaners, who must deal with text files all day long. We are going to take a tour of some of the most useful features now.
Tip
There are dozens of text editors available for every operating system. Some of them cost money, but many are available at no cost. For this chapter, I am going to use Text Wrangler, a no cost editor available for OSX (available here: http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler). The features shown in this chapter are widely available in most other editors, such as Sublime Editor, but you should check the documentation for whatever editor you have chosen...