Nano - Text Editor

When working on the command line, quite often you will need to create or edit text files. Two of the most powerful and popular command-line editors are Vim and Emacs. Both of them have a steep learning curve that can be intimidating to new users. For those who need a simple editor, there is nano.

GNU nano is an easy to use command line text editor for Unix and Linux operating systems. It includes all the basic functionality you’d expect from a regular text editor, like syntax highlighting, multiple buffers, search and replace with regular expression support, spellchecking, UTF-8 encoding, and more.

In this guide, explain the basic usage of the nano editor, including how to create and open a file, edit a file, save a file, search and replace text, cut and paste text, and more.

Installing Nano

Nano text editor is pre-installed on macOS and most Linux distros. To check if it is installed on your system type:

nano --versionCopy

The output will look something like this:

GNU nano, version 2.9.3
(C) 1999-2011, 2013-2018 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
(C) 2014-2018 the contributors to nano
Email: [e-mail]	Web: https://nano-editor.org/
Copy

If you don’t have nano installed on your system, you can install it using the package manager of your distribution.

Install Nano on Ubuntu and Debian

sudo apt install nanoCopy

Install Nano on CentOS and Fedora

sudo yum install nanoCopy

Opening and Creating Files

To open an existing file or to create a new file, type nano followed by the file name:

nano filenameCopy

Searching and replacing

To search for a text, press Ctrl+w, type in the search term, and press Enter. The cursor will move to the first match. To move to the next match, press Alt+w.

If you want to search and replace, press Ctrl+\. Enter the search term and the text to be replaced with. The editor will move to the first match and ask you whether to replace it. After hitting Y or N it will move to the next match. Pressing A will replace all matches.

Copping, cutting, and pasting

To select text, move the cursor to the beginning of the text and press Alt+a. This will set a selection mark. Move the cursor to the end of the text you want to select using the arrow keys. The selected text will be highlighted. If you want to cancel the selection press Ctrl+6

Copy the selected text to the clipboard using the Alt+6 command. Ctrl+k will cut the selected text.

If you want to cut whole lines, simply move the cursor to the line and press Ctrl+k. You can cut multiple lines by hitting Ctrl+k several times.

To paste the text move the cursor to where you want to put the text and press Ctrl+u.

Saving and Exiting

To save the changes you’ve made to the file, press Ctrl+o. If the file doesn’t already exist, it will be created once you save it.

To exit nano press Ctrl+x. If there are unsaved changes, you’ll be asked whether you want to save the changes.

This opens a new editor window, and you can start editing the file.