NanoHowto

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Nano Howto

Introduction

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This page will explain simple things with nano, and will give links to off site help.

What is nano

Nano is a text editor that is not flashy or fancy. It is a clone of the pico editor which is shipped with the pine email client. Nano is nice to just make quick edits in text files, but most do not prefer it to do heavy editing. Other editor's such as "emacs", "vim", "gedit" all offer coloring of text and auto formating. Nano gets the job done without any distraction's.

How to start nano

To just start a regular nano session.

    bash:~$ nano -w <nameoffile>

This will open <nameoffile> into a editing window. You can create new files like this or edit existing files. The "-w" is present to disable wordwrapping, which can cause problems in some types of files.

How to use nano

To save in nano you must use certain key strokes. When you see ctrl/o it means to hit the control key and the "o" key at the same time.

To write to a file, or to save use: ctrl/o

To exit nano: ctrl/x

To search the current file: ctrl/w

Those are the three main commands you will use.