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troglobit
editline
C2017–2024
troglobit / editline

editline

A small replacement for GNU readline() for UNIX

4Distinct people
4Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
411GitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

A small replacement for GNU readline() for UNIX

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

I like this title so much I am finally going to give this shell a try. One thing I notice right away is readline. Could editline also be an option. (There's two "editlines",…

1vuio0pswjnm7 used a recommendation phrase. One indexed comment matches. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 10:02:05 AM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year4 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2017-11-10 20:54:46 UTC to 2024-05-14 00:49:25 UTC.

012017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments20172018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments20202021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 comments2024

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC110
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC110

What Hacker News says

1 sources
Already discussed on HN: GNU readline, BSD editline, rlwrap and linenoise. I suspect enhance and libtecla have been discussed too (alternatives to rlwrap and readline). For example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5086837 Both editline and readline are large, too large to be compiled into every program that could benefit from REPL. The answer to the bloat is linenoise. Great project. But then there are all the programs that already have the readline bloat compiled in. How to replace it with something smaller? Can this be done? There is another editline, not NetBSD's editline. It may predate the web, as it was originally distributed via Usenet. I do not recall it ever being discussed on HN. I suspect the original author probably has an HN account. From Github: *call compatible with GNU readline* small size (<30K) ori
Read the rest
ginally developed for older UNIX and Plan 9 forked from Minix 3, not related to NetBSD editline does not rely on libtermcap/curses source: https://github.com/troglobit/editline socat can function as a replacement for rlwrap, something like: socat -t0 readline exec:q where "q" is a program that could benefit from a REPL. Perceptually I find socat readline exits faster than rlwrap. The later always feels a bit sluggish. Same for libtecla's enhance. Is there a linenoise-based replacement for rlwrap?
In GNU Readline for Better Productivity on the Command Line

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