Editing Text file (section)

{{short description|Computer file containing plain text}}
{{more citations needed|date=December 2015}}
{{Infobox file format
| name = Text file
| icon = Text-txt.svg
| iconcaption = 
| icon_size = 
| screenshot = 
| screenshot_size = 
| caption = 
|_noextcode = 
| extension = .text, .txt
|_nomimecode = 
| mime = text/plain
| type code = TEXT
| uniform_type = public.plain-text
| conforms_to = public.text
| magic = 
| developer = 
| released =                <!-- {{start date and age|YYYY|mm|dd|df=yes/no}} -->
| latest_release_version = 
| latest_release_date =     <!-- {{start date and age|YYYY|mm|dd|df=yes/no}} -->
| genre = [[Document file format]], [[Digital container format|Generic container format]]
| container_for = 
| contained_by = 
| extended_from = 
| extended_to = 
| standard =                <!-- or: | standards = -->
| free = 
| url = 
}}

A '''text file''' (sometimes spelled '''textfile'''; an old alternative name is '''flat file''') is a kind of [[computer file]] that is structured as a sequence of [[line (text file)|lines]] of [[electronic text]]. A text file exists [[Data storage|stored as data]] within a [[computer file system]].

In operating systems such as [[CP/M]], where the operating system does not keep track of the file size in bytes, the end of a text file is denoted by placing one or more special characters, known as an [[end-of-file]] (EOF) marker, as padding after the last line in a text file. In modern operating systems such as [[DOS]], [[Microsoft Windows]] and [[Unix-like]] systems, text files do not contain any special EOF character, because file systems on those operating systems keep track of the file size in bytes.

Some operating systems, such as [[Multics]], Unix-like systems, CP/M, DOS, the [[classic Mac OS]], and Windows, store text files as a sequence of bytes, with an [[Newline|end-of-line]] [[delimiter]] at the end of each line. Other operating systems, such as [[OpenVMS]] and [[OS/360 and successors|OS/360 and its successors]], have [[record-oriented filesystem]]s, in which text files are stored as a sequence either of fixed-length records or of variable-length records with a record-length value in the record header. 

"Text file" refers to a type of container, while [[plain text]] refers to a type of content.

At a generic level of description, there are two kinds of computer files: text files and [[binary file]]s.<ref name="Lewis000">{{cite book |last=Lewis |first=John |url=https://archive.org/details/computersciencei00nell |title=Computer Science Illuminated |publisher=Jones and Bartlett |year=2006 |isbn=0-7637-4149-3 |url-access=registration}}</ref>