Stanza: a dependency-free line editor for Zig terminal programs

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Stanza: dependency-free line editing for Zig terminal programs

I wrote a small line editor for Zig terminal applications:

It is meant for CLIs that need more than a basic readLine, but do not want to depend on readline, linenoise, libc, or another terminal library.

It supports history, completion, hints, syntax highlighting, bracketed paste, password input, vi/emacs-style editing, async output above the prompt, and both blocking and event-loop driven APIs.

A few design choices:

  • allocator-explicit and instance-based
  • no global editor state
  • runtime-configurable callbacks for completion, hints, and highlighting
  • UTF-8/display-width aware, but not a full grapheme-cluster editor
  • tested on Linux, macOS, and Windows

I would be interested in feedback on the API shape and on whether the terminal handling looks reasonable/idiomatic.

Supported Zig versions

Currently Zig 0.16.0.

AI / LLM usage disclosure

I used AI assistance while writing parts of the code, tests, and documentation. I reviewed and tested the implementation myself, and I maintain the repository.

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