Textzeiger

Textzeiger is a generic term in computing used to denote a pointer or indicator to a position or span within a text buffer. It can be used in text editors, word processors, compilers, and natural language processing tools to reference where in the text a operation should occur or where a result applies.

In its simplest form a textzeiger is an integer offset counting characters from the beginning of the buffer. In more advanced contexts it can be a pair of offsets (start, end) describing a selection or a grapheme-aware pointer that aligns with user-perceived characters rather than code points. Handling Unicode, normalization, and line endings is a common concern.

In practical terms a textzeiger enables navigation (move to a position), selection (define a range for editing), and matching (anchor for search or syntax highlighting). It is commonly used in features such as insertion points, highlighting spans, diff annotation, and token boundaries in parsers.

Implementation notes: textzeiger must be consistent with the underlying text encoding, especially for multi-byte encodings. Efficient data structures include offset-based pointers aligned to buffers, or object representations that map to lines and columns. Thread safety and undo/redo support are relevant in interactive applications.

See also: cursor, caret, offset, text buffer, token, range, selection.