For example, the ^J commands mean to press the Ctrl and J keys at the same time. The caret symbol ( ^) represents the Ctrl key. This opens a new editor window, and you can start editing the file.Īt the bottom of the window, there is a list of the most basic command shortcuts to use with the nano editor.Īll commands are prefixed with either ^ or M character. To open an existing file or to create a new file, type nano followed by the file name: nano filename Install Nano on Ubuntu and Debian # sudo apt install nano Install Nano on CentOS and Fedora # sudo yum install nano Opening and Creating Files # If you don’t have nano installed on your system, you can install it using the package manager of your distribution. The output will look something like this: GNU nano, version 2.9.3 To check if it is installed on your system type: nano -version Nano text editor is pre-installed on macOS and most Linux distros. 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. 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. GNU nano is an easy to use command line text editor for Unix and Linux operating systems. For those who need a simple editor, there is nano.

Both of them have a steep learning curve that can be intimidating to new users. Two of the most powerful and popular command-line editors are Vim and Emacs.

When working on the command line, quite often you will need to create or edit text files.

How to edit text file in terminal