Chapter 11. Editing PHP (-Nuke) files

PHP-Nuke files are PHP files. PHP files contain plain ASCII text and as such they can be edited with any decent text editor. By “decent” we do not only mean an editor that offers a minimum of comfort in editing texts - most of them do. By “decent” we mean an editor that will not introduce extra (most of the time invisible) characters in your file, that will destroy the rest of your day with PHP (amd PHP-Nuke).

We wouldn't stress this point if we hadn't seen enough cases of people getting errors from the PHP interpreter complaining that their config.php file, for example, contained an error - were no error was visible. For this reason, a warning is in place:

	O quantum est in rebus inane![1]
	Don't even think about editing a PHP (-Nuke) file with Notepad or Wordpad! You run the risk to introduce invisible characters in your text files, causing spurious errors that will be very hard to find and correct! What may seem to be just blanks or empty space, is going to drive you insane!

So, if you are not supposed to use Notepad or Wordpad, what are the alternatives? What decent text editors are out there for editing our PHP and PHP-Nuke files? In the following sections, we will present a few of them. See also Decent Text Editor.