# Reading EDLIN's source code 👓 (2024-04-26)

**URL:** <https://pluralist.net/t/reading-edlins-source-code-2024-04-26/144>\
**Category:** Code Reading\
**Created:** [April 26, 2024, 7:00am UTC](https://pluralist.net/t/reading-edlins-source-code-2024-04-26/144 "2024-04-26T07:00:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![delyan](https://pluralist.net/user_avatar/pluralist.net/delyan/32/245_2.png) [@delyan](https://pluralist.net/u/delyan)\
**Post date:** [April 26, 2024, 7:00am UTC](https://pluralist.net/t/reading-edlins-source-code-2024-04-26/144/1 "2024-04-26T07:00:00Z")

</div>

We here at the Pluralist Network are huge fans of [Line Editors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_editor). We have [studied and written about ed, the standard editor, extensively](https://pluralist.net/t/ed-is-the-standard-text-editor-2024-01-02/9). So naturally when [Microsoft open-sourced MS-DOS 4.0](https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/opensource/2024/04/25/open-sourcing-ms-dos-4-0/), which included [EDLIN](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edlin), we were quite excited.

We share the excitement of being able to read EDLIN’s source code as shared with us by @bcantrill [https://twitter.com/bcantrill/status/1783684972542582968](https://twitter.com/bcantrill/status/1783684972542582968)

EDLIN was a line editor developed by Microsoft for early versions of MS-DOS and PC DOS. It was created in 1980 by Tim Paterson. At the time Tom worked for [Seattle Computer Products](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Computer_Products). He designed EDLIN for [QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) aka 86-DOS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/86-DOS), which was later sold to Microsoft and became MS-DOS. EDLIN was included to provide a basic text editing tool for managing configuration files and other simple text files on early PCs.

> <https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS/blob/main/v4.0/src/CMD/EDLIN/EDLIN.ASM>