Recently, we conducted an experiment to determine and compare the speeds of some of the most popular text editors. Guess what? We found out that EmEditor Professional 8.02 is the fastest overall! In fact, EmEditor Professional 8.02 completed all tests in 30 seconds or less, every single time! For more details, please see our test results:
We tested for:
- Time to Launch Program (no sidebars)
- Time to Open a Medium File (141 MB)
- Time to Open a Large File (809 MB)
- Time to Complete Replace (case sensitive) *Replace “a” with “@@”.
We tested twelve of the most popular text editors. Please see the footnotes for more details regarding the test conditions.(*)
Results
Time to Launch Program (no sidebars)
The fastest text editor was EmEditor Professional 8.02 at 00:00.196th of a second.
Time to Open a Medium File (141MB)
Almost half of the text editors were able to open the test file in less than 25 seconds. EmEditor Professional 8.02 opened the test file in 00:16.02 seconds. The test file was 1.75 million lines, ASCII text file (141MB).
Time to Open a Large File (809MB)
Although all of the text editors could open the medium file (141MB), not all of them could open the large file (809MB). In fact, only 1/3 of the text editors were able to open the large file (809MB). The fastest text editor was EmEditor Professional 8.02 at 00:28.39 seconds. The test file was 10 million lines, ASCII text file (809MB).
Time to Complete Replace (case sensitive)
Two text editors were unable to complete this test and a third took more than one minute to complete the test; however, all of the remaining text editors completed this test in less than twelve seconds. EmEditor Professional 8.02 was one of the fastest text editors at 00:001.41 seconds. The test file was 200,000 lines, ASCII text file (16MB).
Conclusion
Some text editors are optimized for speed and size, and others are not. There are text editors which include optimization options and others that simply operate quickly, and still others that just crash. For these tests, here are the overall best text editors.
The following text editor completed all four tests in less than 1 minute each, every time.
- EmEditor Professional 8.02
The following text editors (quickly) completed all four tests.
- EmEditor Professional 8.02
- U 14.20
- T1 5.2.0
These text editors completed 3/4 of the tests in less than 1 minute; however, they failed to complete the Time to Open a Large File (809MB) test.
If you would like to view the raw data, please see Text Editor Speed Test Results (PDF).
* Notes
– We tested the text editors on a clean Windows Vista SP1 (512MB RAM) on a Microsoft Virtual PC 2007. The host machine was a Dell Dimension C521 Athlon 64 X2 4600 2.40 GHz (3GB RAM), Windows Vista.
– All compared and reported results are the average of 5 tests.
– For each program we recorded six times for each test. The first time was always discarded, since this time tended to be much higher than the other test times.
– Then we calculated the average of the remaining 5 times—this is the reported time.
– For the first test—Time to Launch Program (no sidebars)—the times are reported in MM:SS.000.
– For the remaining three tests—Time to Open a Medium File (141 MB), Time to Open a Large File (809 MB), and Time to Complete Replace (case sensitive)—the times are reported in MM:SS.00.
– Any text editor that returned a test time higher than 10 minutes was tagged as too slow or error, as appropriate. These text editors were given a 00:00.00 test time for the tests they failed, and display gray results on the graphs.
– In the Time to Complete Replace (case sensitive) test, besides the Match Case option, we used all default settings. All undo information was kept.
– In the Time to Complete Replace (case sensitive) test, for H 7.10, we used the option “Go Faster”. Without this option, the replace would be too slow to be measured.
– In the Time to Complete Replace (case sensitive) test, for U 14.20 we used the option “Use temporary files for editing (normal operation)”. If we used the option “Open file without temp file but prompt for each file (CAUTION: Edits are permanent, decreases load time for large files)” the replace would be too fast to be measured.
– For the Time to Launch Program (no sidebars) test, we conducted the test with no sidebars, to optimize launching speeds.
– The programs, Notepad 6.0 and WordPad 6.0, are Microsoft programs included with the Windows Vista install.
– For the text editors other than EmEditor and the Microsoft programs, their names have been abbreviated for anonymity.
– For those commercial programs not included with the Windows Vista install, we used the available trial versions of the products.
– The Japanese text editor, H 7.10, included an English version, so we used the English version.
– We ran the Japanese text editor, T2 0.93, on the Regional and Language Administrative Options Japanese option.
– We used Application Launch Speed Measuring Program (Japanese) to measure program launch time.
EmEditor Professional 9.01 has been released!
/in EmEditor Core/by Yutaka EmuraEmEditor Professional 9.01 (full-version) is available for download.
Updates from 9.00 include:
– On certain machines, the “An error occurred while registering the key.” message might appear when trying to enter a registration key. This issue was fixed.
– The CTRL + R shortcut was removed from the default Snippets keyboard settings.
– “Check for Updates” and “Customize Update Checker” commands were added to the Help menu. These commands allow you to check for updates manually, and to set the frequency of the update checker from “Every day”, “Every year” to “Never”.
– On the first launch of EmEditor, the message “The software might connect to Emurasoft server via Internet to retrieve available newer version information of the software and to verify the legitimacy of the license. … Do you agree?” appears now. This sentence was included in the End User License Agreement during the Setup, but the sentence was also included as a prompt message for the first use of EmEditor in order to confirm the user agreement.
The current Trial version (v9.00) never connects to Emurasoft server to retrieve update information or to verify the legitimacy of the license.
<<< To Download >>>
v9 users who already registered to Emurasoft Customer Center can go to https://support.emeditor.com/ to login, and then go to “Available Downloads” to download the latest versions.
There are no update for the trial version.
If you have purchased older versions of EmEditor Professional (v4-8) before and if you have your registration key, you can upgrade to the latest version of EmEditor Professional for free by registering your product at Emurasoft Customer Center.
Thank you for using EmEditor Professional!
EmEditor Professional 9.00 has been released!
/in EmEditor Core/by Yutaka EmuraEmEditor Professional 9.00 has been released!
New features include
– New Snippets Plug-in
– CSV, TSV and DSV mode
– Narrowing
– Brackets/Quotation Mark Auto-Complete
– Compatible with Windows 7
– and more!
The trial version cannot be unlocked with a registration key. Customers who purchase licenses can download the full versions of 32-bit and 64-bit editions. The registration key for Version 9 is different from older versions.
If you have purchased older versions of EmEditor Professional (v4-8) before and if you have your registration key, you can upgrade to the latest version of EmEditor Professional for free by registering your product at Emurasoft Customer Center https://support.emeditor.com/send_keys.php
Thank you for using EmEditor Professional!
EmEditor Professional acquires the “Compatible with Windows 7” logo!
/in EmEditor Core/by Yutaka EmuraWe are proud to announce that Emurasoft acquires the “Compatible with Windows 7” logo. EmEditor Professional is now compatible with Windows 7.
EmEditor Professional 8.06 has been released!
/in EmEditor Core/by Yutaka EmuraEmEditor Professional 8.06 has been released!
Updates from v8.05 include:
– In the previous versions, Trend Micro Internet Security might display warning and stop working when the Explorer plug-in tries to draw the Trend Micro Internet Security icon on the Desktop. Note that EmEditor never try to change system files, and this is solely the false alarm caused by Trend Micro Internet Security. This version adds code to work around this issue.
– Fixed the bug that the last line without a return may not be selected completely with the line seleciton mode.
– Adjusted how the menu appears.
EmEditor Professional 8 is available free for all EmEditor Professional registered users.
EmEditor Professional 8.05 has been released!
/in EmEditor Core/by Yutaka EmuraEmEditor Professional 8.05 has been released!
Updates from v8.04 include:
– Fixed the bug that regular expression replace in selection only might crash when virtual space is on.
– Matching Parenthesis/Bracket Extend command did not always work in the HTML configuration.
– Fixed the bug that the Indent Guide did not show correctly.
– Fixed the bug that GetProfileString method did not work when using INI files.
– Fixed the bug that uppercase/lowercase and half-width/full-width conversions did not always work on the last line when there was no return at the end of the document.
– Fixed the bug related vertical editing in one line selection.
– Fixed the selection range after box selection replace in virtual space mode.
– German edition with German installer added.
EmEditor Professional 8 is available free for all EmEditor Professional registered users.
Text Editor Speed Comparison
/in Journal/by Yutaka EmuraRecently, we conducted an experiment to determine and compare the speeds of some of the most popular text editors. Guess what? We found out that EmEditor Professional 8.02 is the fastest overall! In fact, EmEditor Professional 8.02 completed all tests in 30 seconds or less, every single time! For more details, please see our test results:
We tested for:
We tested twelve of the most popular text editors. Please see the footnotes for more details regarding the test conditions.(*)
Results
Time to Launch Program (no sidebars)
The fastest text editor was EmEditor Professional 8.02 at 00:00.196th of a second.
Time to Open a Medium File (141MB)
Almost half of the text editors were able to open the test file in less than 25 seconds. EmEditor Professional 8.02 opened the test file in 00:16.02 seconds. The test file was 1.75 million lines, ASCII text file (141MB).
Time to Open a Large File (809MB)
Although all of the text editors could open the medium file (141MB), not all of them could open the large file (809MB). In fact, only 1/3 of the text editors were able to open the large file (809MB). The fastest text editor was EmEditor Professional 8.02 at 00:28.39 seconds. The test file was 10 million lines, ASCII text file (809MB).
Time to Complete Replace (case sensitive)
Two text editors were unable to complete this test and a third took more than one minute to complete the test; however, all of the remaining text editors completed this test in less than twelve seconds. EmEditor Professional 8.02 was one of the fastest text editors at 00:001.41 seconds. The test file was 200,000 lines, ASCII text file (16MB).
Conclusion
Some text editors are optimized for speed and size, and others are not. There are text editors which include optimization options and others that simply operate quickly, and still others that just crash. For these tests, here are the overall best text editors.
The following text editor completed all four tests in less than 1 minute each, every time.
The following text editors (quickly) completed all four tests.
These text editors completed 3/4 of the tests in less than 1 minute; however, they failed to complete the Time to Open a Large File (809MB) test.
If you would like to view the raw data, please see Text Editor Speed Test Results (PDF).
* Notes
– We tested the text editors on a clean Windows Vista SP1 (512MB RAM) on a Microsoft Virtual PC 2007. The host machine was a Dell Dimension C521 Athlon 64 X2 4600 2.40 GHz (3GB RAM), Windows Vista.
– All compared and reported results are the average of 5 tests.
– For each program we recorded six times for each test. The first time was always discarded, since this time tended to be much higher than the other test times.
– Then we calculated the average of the remaining 5 times—this is the reported time.
– For the first test—Time to Launch Program (no sidebars)—the times are reported in MM:SS.000.
– For the remaining three tests—Time to Open a Medium File (141 MB), Time to Open a Large File (809 MB), and Time to Complete Replace (case sensitive)—the times are reported in MM:SS.00.
– Any text editor that returned a test time higher than 10 minutes was tagged as too slow or error, as appropriate. These text editors were given a 00:00.00 test time for the tests they failed, and display gray results on the graphs.
– In the Time to Complete Replace (case sensitive) test, besides the Match Case option, we used all default settings. All undo information was kept.
– In the Time to Complete Replace (case sensitive) test, for H 7.10, we used the option “Go Faster”. Without this option, the replace would be too slow to be measured.
– In the Time to Complete Replace (case sensitive) test, for U 14.20 we used the option “Use temporary files for editing (normal operation)”. If we used the option “Open file without temp file but prompt for each file (CAUTION: Edits are permanent, decreases load time for large files)” the replace would be too fast to be measured.
– For the Time to Launch Program (no sidebars) test, we conducted the test with no sidebars, to optimize launching speeds.
– The programs, Notepad 6.0 and WordPad 6.0, are Microsoft programs included with the Windows Vista install.
– For the text editors other than EmEditor and the Microsoft programs, their names have been abbreviated for anonymity.
– For those commercial programs not included with the Windows Vista install, we used the available trial versions of the products.
– The Japanese text editor, H 7.10, included an English version, so we used the English version.
– We ran the Japanese text editor, T2 0.93, on the Regional and Language Administrative Options Japanese option.
– We used Application Launch Speed Measuring Program (Japanese) to measure program launch time.
EmEditor Professional 8.04 has been released!
/in EmEditor Core/by Yutaka EmuraEmEditor Professional 8.04 has been released!
Updates from v8.03 include:
– Fixed the bug that Shift-JIS files could be opened as UTF-8.
– A Korean installer is available now.
EmEditor Professional 8 is available free for all EmEditor Professional registered users.
EmEditor Professional 8.03 has been released!
/in EmEditor Core/by Yutaka EmuraEmEditor Professional 8.03 has been released!
Updates from v8.02 include:
– Fixed the bug that Western European files could be opened as UTF-8 on Windows XP or earlier.
– Fixed the bug that the sub-argument (f) did not return only the file name in the Projects plug-in.
– Fixed the bug that the Find/Replace dialog font did not always change even if the “Change Font only if Character Set of Selected Font is not System Default”.
– Fixed the bug that last sentence on the bottom of the first page could be printed in duplicate in the first sentence the second page.
– Fixed the bug that the installers of international editions (except English and Japanese) failed to register emedshl.dll so the EmEditor item did not appear in the Explorer context menu.
– Fixed the issue that the Save As dialog did not always initialize its path with the target folder.
EmEditor Professional 8 is available free for all EmEditor Professional registered users.
EmEditor Professional 8.02 has been released!
/in EmEditor Core/by Yutaka EmuraEmEditor Professional 8.02 has been released!
Updates from v8.01 include:
– Negative lookbehind regular expression bug fixed.
– Font size change with CTRL + Mouse Wheel can now be disabled by adding “WheelFont” value as REG_DWORD in KEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareEmSoftEmEditor v3Common key using the Registry Editor (regedit.exe), and set to 0.
– Fixed crash when deleting many lines in a large file.
– Fixed potential crash when a file is drag and dropped to an EmEditor window depending on plug-ins used.
– Drag and drop the EmEditor icon on the left top corner of EmEditor window to the Desktop while pressing ALT key can create a link of the file now.
– French, Russian, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese installers are available now in addition to English and Japanese installers.
– Fixed the bug that macro buttons might not appear on toolbars when using INI files.
– Fixed the bug that RightAll and RightSide properties of HighlightItem may be altered after document.Config.Save() in a macro.
– Fixed the bug that “Out of Memory” error might appear when using the auto indent.
EmEditor Professional 8 is available free for all EmEditor Professional registered users.
EmEditor Professional 8 works with Windows 7 beta!
/in EmEditor Core/by Yutaka EmuraWe are excited to announce that EmEditor Professional 8 is compatible with Windows 7 beta. We recently tested EmEditor Professional with Windows 7 beta, and found no problems. However, please note that the “View Source” feature of Internet Explorer 8 in Windows 7 does not display source files with EmEditor. Internet Explorer 8 will display the source files with an Internet Explorer 8 window. We will do more research on this issue.