EditPad Pro is a powerful and versatile text editor that is perfectly suited to edit any kind of text file. A batch file is simply a plain text file saved with a .bat extension.
With EditPad Pro you can easily open and edit many batch files at the same time. There’s no limit. Arrange batch files and assorted text and data files into multiple projects to open them at once and edit them together. Open all files in a folder (and its subfolders) into a project. Many of EditPad Pro’s editing commands can work on all files in a given project at once. Quickly switch between files and projects by clicking on their tabs. Move back and forth with the handy “previous editing position” and “previously edited file” commands. Manage long lists of text files and large projects with the handy file manager sidebar which can rename, move, copy and delete files.
EditPad Pro’s Clip Collection makes it easy to keep a list of batch file snippets at your fingertips, ready to be inserted into your batch files. Such a snippet can be a single batch command, a lengthy path, half a batch file, or anything you want.
Compare any two files to get a view of the differences between two files, or check which changes were made between two (backup) copies of the same file. EditPad Pro can highlight difference, merge the two files, and extract the differences or similarities into new files. Very convenient for rolling back inappropriate changes you made to a file, or for double-checking the changes somebody else made to a file you sent them. You can easily send files via email right within EditPad Pro.
EditPad Pro sports one of the most extensive search-and-replace features of any text editor. Quickly find the part of the file you want to edit. Highlight matches, fold lines, and skip over matches and files. Instantly make many replacements throughout a (rectangular) selection, file, project, or all files in all projects. Use regular expressions and adaptive case options for powerful and dynamic search terms and replacements. Clever use of EditPad Pro’s search-and-replace can automate much tedious editing.
Record and play back keystroke macros to reduce repetitive tasks to a single key combination. Record a search as part of a macro to instantly edit all search matches in any particular way. Save any number of macros to build your own library of high-octane text editing wizards.
Use rectangular selections to easily edit columns of text. Any editing command that works on a usual linear selection also works on a rectangular selection. Shift and insert columns left and right, move blocks up and down, fill and indent blocks, etc. Handy commands to begin, end, shrink and expand selections make it easy to work with blocks spanning many pages.
Easily edit all kinds of lists with handy commands to sort lines alphabetically and delete duplicate lines. Use these commands with rectangular selections to sort and trim lists of multiple columns on one of the columns.
After editing your batch files, you can run them right within EditPad Pro. No need to switch back and forth between your text editor and the command shell while testing your batch files.
You can add as many batch files to EditPad Pro’s Tools menu as you want. You can even add “%FILE%” as a tool, which will run whichever batch file you’re editing.
The key benefit is that EditPad Pro can capture the batch file’s output into a special message pane, or into a new tab. While the Windows command shell will only show the last 100 lines or so of output, EditPad Pro saves all the output. If you capture it into a new tab, the output becomes a regular (unsaved) file which you can edit and save like any other file. You can set up a special file type for the output with specific settings, such as the special syntax coloring scheme for batch file output that is included with EditPad Pro. The scheme can highlight file names and line number references in the batch file output. Double-click a link to open the file in EditPad Pro at the designated line.
If you capture the output into the message pane, you can keep the output visible while you inspect and edit the batch file and data files referenced in the output. The message pane can use the same syntax coloring scheme for highlighting the batch file’s output. The scheme is fully editable, so you can adjust it to the particulars of the output produced by whichever commands you run in your batch files.