4 ms·

Is it even possible to write any text editor without some form of rope data structure?

• caconym_ 2y ago
  Gap buffers are the other classic option, and there are others too, e.g. piece tables.
• cschmidt 2y ago
  Here's a paper reviewing the various choices, that is often mentioned in discussions around data structures for text editors: https://www.cs.unm.edu/~crowley/papers/sds.pdf https://www.cs.unm.edu/~crowley/papers/sds.pdf
• marssaxman 2y ago
  Most certainly: gap buffers, piece tables, and line arrays are also popular choices.
• ben-schaaf 2y ago
  VSCode uses a piece table (https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2018/03/23/text-buffer-reimplementation https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2018/03/23/text-buffer-r...).
  • canucker2016 2y ago
    MS Word used piece table, which led to the "fast save" feature - which saved only the newer pieces.