Text editor that updates file without prompting

Is there any console- or window-based text editor that automatically reloads file changed on disk without prompting anything?

Solution 1:

vim can do that. Just add

set autoread

to your ~/.vimrc. (Also check out the Tail Bundle plugin.)
The autoread setting applies only certain events (which can be determined by checking the help text for timestamp (:h timestamp)). To make vim load files more frequently, there are two decent options:

1. Define a function which watches for changes.

2. Set an autocommand such as:

   au FocusGained,BufEnter,BufWinEnter,CursorHold,CursorMoved * :checktime
   

   This will reload whenever vim gains focus, you enter the buffer, move a cursor, idle the cursor. It won't change the current cursor position though.

emacs can also do this, if you add to your .emacs:

(global-auto-revert-mode t)

This doesn't watch for changes either, but the following should:

(global-auto-revert-tail-mode t)

This is supposed to work like tail -f, according to the EmacsWiki.

Even if gedit doesn't support this, I'm sure there are plenty of other GUI editors which do.

Sources:

1. Can vim monitor realtime changes to a file
2. How to have Emacs auto-refresh all buffers when files have changed on disk?