1. Salutations!
2. Printing the Buffer
3. Printing the Status Line
4. Finishing up
5. Afterthoughts
6. Source Code

Salutations!

Just gonna apologize for the weird intros - I'm starting to run out of phrases to start the intro. Last time we left off, we finished a bunch of implementations such as the input handler, moving directions, etc. Now, we are going to finish up everything!

Printing the Buffer

Printing the buffer is a somewhat easy task if you don't what a scrolling feature. I know how to do it but I can't implement it without it going wrong with a ton of bugs. This one here will just be a simple for-loop with no scrolling feature.

void Editor::printBuff()
{
    for(int i=0; i<LINES-1; i++)
    {
        if(i >= buff->lines.size())
        {
            move(i, 0);
            clrtoeol();
        }
        else
        {
            mvprintw(i, 0, buff->lines[i].c_str());
        }
        clrtoeol();
    }
    move(y, x);
}

Note that this will only be good with files that have lines less than the number of lines your terminal could display on your screen.

Printing the Status Line

I like my status line on the last line of the terminal (just like ... oh whatever, you get the drift). You could put it somewhere else, if you like.

void Editor::printStatusLine()
{
    attron(A_REVERSE);
    mvprintw(LINES-1, 0, status.c_str());
    clrtoeol();
    attroff(A_REVERSE);
}

Finishing up

Okay! We are almost done! Three simple functions stand in our way: the 2 variations of the Editor::deleteLine function, and the most important Editor::saveFile() function!

void Editor::deleteLine()
{
    buff->removeLine(y);
}

void Editor::deleteLine(int i)
{
    buff->removeLine(i);
}

The Editor::saveFile() function:

void Editor::saveFile()
{
    if(filename == "")
    {
        // Set filename to untitled
        filename = "untitled";
    }

    ofstream f(filename.c_str());
    if(f.is_open())
    {
        for(int i=0; i<buff->lines.size(); i++)
        {
            f << buff->lines[i] << endl;
        }
        status = "Saved to file!";
    }
    else
    {
        status = "Error: Cannot open file for writing!";
    }
    f.close();
}

Afterthoughts

That was fun, wasn't it? Some ideas for other features to add to this editor:

• Scrolling
• Syntax highlighting for some language
• Deleting line(s) and other features that were included in vim

Source Code

The sources to this EXACT TUTORIAL (as well as the Makefile) may be found in this tar file here.

Tags: ncurses tutorial c++ editor