# Sam text editor

9 Hacker News commenters recommended Sam text editor and 3 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 8 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** A keyboard-driven text editor, akin to a graphical vi, whose structural regular expressions people find more powerful than vi's own.

## Why people recommend it

- Structural regular expressions more powerful than vi (3 comments): "I consider the Sam regular expresions far more powerful than the vi keys themselves." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47065006)) "I understood structural expressions for Sam/Acme really fast" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46975095)) "much more powerful expressions than Ex/Vi ones" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47060020))
- Keyboard-driven, vi-like editing (2 comments): "Sam is very much a keyboard driven modern TUI ed (the standard editor)." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49405642)) "Sam it's like a graphical vi, period, there's nothing alien of it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47556921))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Zed](https://hackerapproved.com/p/zed.md): 700 recommend
- [GNU Emacs](https://hackerapproved.com/p/emacs.md): 648 recommend
- [Vim](https://hackerapproved.com/p/vim.md): 513 recommend
- [Visual Studio Code](https://hackerapproved.com/p/visual-studio-code.md): 485 recommend
- [Neovim](https://hackerapproved.com/p/neovim.md): 295 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Sam text editor", https://hackerapproved.com/p/sam/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).