antirez/linenoise

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: no_releases

Adoption not part of the score

4343 stars · 741 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

Linenoise is a tiny (~1600 lines), zero-configuration, BSD-licensed C library providing readline-style line editing for terminal programs. It supports single and multi-line editing, history, completion, hints, UTF-8, and a multiplexing mode, and is used by Redis, MongoDB, and Android.

Use cases

• add line editing and history to a CLI tool without linking readline
• embed a small readline alternative in a C project
• implement tab completion in a command-line REPL
• support UTF-8 and emoji input at a terminal prompt
• avoid GPL readline licensing in a BSD-licensed application
• handle asynchronous output while a prompt is active

When to choose

• you need a small, easily embeddable line editor with minimal dependencies
• GPL licensing of readline is a problem for your project
• you want history, completion, and hints in a REPL with little code
• you need broad terminal compatibility including ANSI.SYS

When to avoid

• you need advanced readline features like macros, key binding configuration, or vi/emacs mode toggling
• you are building a GUI application with no terminal interface
• you need Windows-native console APIs beyond ANSI.SYS compatibility

Facets

library · maturity stable

cli developer-tools developer-tools windows cross-platform c readline-replacement line-editing terminal embeddable history completion utf-8 command-line linux macos

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