How to know cursor position index in an editor

I need to know the index of the cursor.

For example, instead of line 4 column 23, I want to know that I'm at the 256th character in the file.**

Notepad++ already has the feature you are looking for.

1. Select all characters from the current cursor position to the start of the file using ctrl+shift+home

2. Look at the status bar where it says "Sel: characters|rows"

   • The first value characters is the number of characters in the selection.
   • The second value rows is the number of rows in the selection.
   • The selection starts from the beginning of the file and ends where the cursor was previously .
   • The value of characters is the "index" of the cursor.
     
     

   

Note that characters includes the end of line characters.

Press Ctrl+G and click the Offset radio button. Your cursor position will be shown in the You are here: line

Example: