[chiPHPug-discuss] Text Editors

[Roderick T. <tho...@ms...>]

For those of you who I haven't met . . .

I'm a novice programmer.  And I'm also an data analyst working in a 
restrictive environment for the State of Michigan.   This being the 
case, it's highly unusual for our Department of Information & Technology 
to allow us to install software that has not been pre-approved by a host 
of committees.   However, my recent duties require me to calculate the 
total number of records (rows) in text files in order to meet certain 
format requirements.  For this reason, I am in need of a text editor 
more advanced than Notepad or Wordpad--one that at least displays row 
counts.  Since a text editor of that sort has not been pre-approved, I 
have been granted permission to test open source editors to recommend as 
state-approved software.  Of course, I would like to take full advantage 
of this opportunity.  For my personal interests I would like to test 
editors that are also useful for PHP and MySql.  Java, Drupal, and other 
platforms would be a plus.  But most importantly, for state business I 
would need features like sorting, searching, data manipulation, and 
other stuff based on certain unique formats.


For example, I may want to identify or count strings that look like these:

HD*as*01*286*441~
REF*zz*20090731***~
INS*1*20090701-20090731*y*x*04~

Thanks.  Your feedback is greatly appreciated.