About notepad.exe

Notepad is a code editor and a program in the Windows operating system used for text editing. It is equivalent to Windows Write and has similar functionality to Microsoft Office. It is an open-source, lightweight, and free plain text editor.

Notepad natively supports up to 27 syntax highlighting options, covering various common source code and scripting languages. Notably, it supports .nfo file viewing and custom languages.

Main features:

Under the "File" menu, there are several simple options: New, Open, Save, Save As, Page Setup, Print, and Exit.

Under the "Edit" menu, in addition to the options found in the right-click menu, the most commonly used options are Find and Replace. Additionally, users can insert the current time and date.

Under the "Format" menu, users can adjust whether or not text wraps and choose the font. When a sentence is too long, and scrolling the scrollbar can cause you to miss some text you want to view, text wrapping can be selected. Changing the font only changes the font currently being viewed and doesn't affect the default font when viewed on another computer. This is because plain text only contains symbols and does not contain any other information.

The "View" menu can only change whether the status bar is displayed, which shows information such as the location of the mouse cursor insertion point.

Under the "Help" menu, in addition to copyright information, users can open related help files.

In addition to plain text, many other file types can be opened using Notepad, such as INI configuration files and INF information files. Many file types are actually text encoding, such as Windows libraries, which are text documents containing specific text that has had the extension changed. Therefore, when encountering a file with an unknown extension, it can be opened with Notepad.

Notepad can only handle plain text files, but because multiple source code formats are also plain text, Notepad has become the most commonly used source code editor. It only has the most basic editing functions, making it small in size, quick to start, low in memory usage, and easy to use.

Although "Notepad" cannot compare with even "WordPad" in terms of functionality, it still has its own characteristics. Compared to Microsoft Word, "Notepad" is indeed too weak, with only a few functions such as new, save, print, find, and replace. However, "Notepad" has an advantage that Word cannot have: fast opening speed and small file size. Software that pursues speed often compares its startup speed, and you can also judge whether the system is very slow by the speed of opening it.

The file size of the same text file saved with Word and Notepad is quite different, so it is best to use Notepad for saving plain text. Notepad can save files without formatting, and you can save files edited with Notepad as any format, such as .html, .java, .asp, and so on. This makes "Notepad" find a new use as a programming language editor. However, considering its poor usability, it is not recommended to use Notepad as an editor.

A little trick that Notepad uses is to enter .LOG on the first line of the Notepad file, and press Enter to create a new line (.log and the text must be separated by a blank line to be effective). After that, you will find that there is a time display at the end of each edit. You can also use this function as a digital diary.