What do you use BBEdit for?

[Rick Yentzer]

I've used BBEdit for a long time, I think I started with v6. I mostly use it for writing in markdown and off and on with web development and python.

I'd like to start using it for other tasks as well, but not sure yet which ones.

So, what do you use it for? Maybe we can all have lightbulb moments.

[Ulrich Kapp]

Web (HTML, CSS), PHP, SQL and shell scripting – nothing special.
Using it since 1992, at that time mainly for Pascal, C and SQL.

But for me, a highlight of BBEdit is the regex text search and replace option, a feature wich I use regularly on different kind of files.

Cheers, Ulrich

[Alfredo]

I use BBEdit as my editor for all kids of things, bypassing the lousy editors of "official" IDEs for various platforms. I enable such IDEs to automatically refresh the files that I change with BBEdit. I then use the "official" IDEs for compiling, building, installing. 

For instance:

Embedded systems (mainly Nordic MCUs) using C. The official IDEs are SEGGER Embedded Studio (SES) (which Nordic is slowly deprecating) and VS Code (which Nordic is aggressively pushing). With all due respect, I avoid VS Code and I prefer using make files directly.

Flutter (iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, Linux, WebApps) using Dart. The official IDEs are VS Code and Android Studio. With all due respect, I avoid VS Code and I prefer using Android Studio.

Node.js using JavaScript.

Documentation (including graphics and videos) using markdown and rendered via Marked 2 into HTML and PDF..

Notes of all kinds.

BBEdit's implementations of all types of regex goodies are lifesavers.

Bottom line: I do all my editing using BBEdit.

[Maarten Sneep]

Hi,

Writing, mostly in LaTeX (fairly maths heavy), some markdown for shorter notes.
Coding and code maintenance. Probably in order of frequency: Python, C++, C, Fortran90+. Mostly science code, batch processing of data, with python for the visualisation and for prototyping.
Digging through logging output if grep, awk and sed don't get me to the details I need.

And most presentations start with an outline writing in Markdown to order my thoughts before making the presentation.

Maarten

[Rob Russell]

Regex on my wordle lists!

Oh, html, markdown, css too!

r

[Fritz Anderson]

I often use BBEdit as a convenience for shell scripting. The Text, Edit, and Markup menus (plus factories) almost always do what I need. If a step turns out wrong, I can ⌘Z to back out. A more muscular scripter might have strung the tasks and special cases into something fit for repeated use, but (1) wouldn't do this more than once, and (2) even if I would, I'd still need to experiment with what the script has to do.

---

For example, a client copied a thousand Mac Illustrator files to Windows. They were created when resource forks were common. Apple solved this by treating resource forks as invisible files under POSIX.

Mass-copying a directory across the Mac/Windows barrier resulted in both the intended data and the mangled resource files. This was unworkable.

Further, the files had been created by typists who by muscle memory used space characters to terminate words, including file names. This upset the Windows UI and prevented renaming and deletion. There were scores of special cases.

BBEdit let me experiment without worrying about data loss — bash commands don't have ⌘Z.

— F

> On Oct 27, 2024, at 2:45 PM, Maarten Sneep <maarte...@xs4all.nl> wrote:
>
> Hi,

["Jan Erik Moström"]

On 27 Oct 2024, at 15:38, Rick Yentzer wrote:

> I'd like to start using it for other tasks as well, but not sure yet which ones.

- Keeping notes
- Massaging text
- Search (search over set of files, often search&replace with regexp)
- Writing code (Python, Java, C, HTML, CSS, etc)
- Writing documents (Markdown ... and once in a while LaTeX)
- Exploring file content
- etc

Very useful additional tools

- git
- Marked 2
- Typinator

= jem

[James Reynolds]

Quoting Jan:

- Keeping notes
- Massaging text

- Search (search over set of files, often search&replace with regexp, and search folders, search open files, search the search results, I've used it all)
- Writing code (Python, shell, Perl, Lua, HTML, CSS, etc)
- Writing documents (Markdown)
- Exploring file content (even binary sometimes)
- A really good difference engine and UI

I want to add that BBEdit's difference interface is so good that I've been able to do things that you just can't do with other tools. I've been able to solve problems way faster, and it's simply because I can compare a huge list of files quickly. I know git has diff but it is horrible compared to BBEdit, and so I'll often keep multiple folders of my projects at different git branches or checkouts and diff them. I'll use it to debug simply by comparing what I've worked on the last hour with the last commit. And when I finish adding a feature of fixing a bug, I'll go back to the last commit and diff it and cherry pick the feature I just added so it looks even better.

BBEdit is also able to open some really big files.

I also use the open over sftp ability periodically.

BBEdit also taught me regex, which I consider myself to be pretty good at now.

James Reynolds
https://magnusviri.com

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[Mark Bowron]

I prefer coding directly in a text editor (Epsilon for Windows/BBEdit for Mac).  The author of a good early-2000s book on HTML convinced me it's the best way.

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["Jan Erik Moström"]

On 29 Oct 2024, at 1:08, James Reynolds wrote:

> I want to add that BBEdit's difference interface is so good that I've been able to do things that you just can't do with other tools.

Yes ... I would like to add "checking cases of plagiarism that are submitted to me" (I'm pretty sure that'd not the use case that Barebons thought of when they implemented it 😜)

= jem