The Beginner’s Guide to Nano, Linux Command-Line Text Editor

New to the Linux command-line? Confused by all of the other advanced text 
editors? How-To Geek’s got your back with this tutorial to Nano, a simple 
text-editor that’s very newbie-friendly.

When getting used to the command-line, Linux novices are often put off by 
other, more advanced text editors such as vim and emacs. While they are 
excellent programs, they do have a bit of a learning curve. Enter Nano, an 
easy-to-use text editor that proves itself versatile and simple. Nano is installed
 by default in Ubuntu and many other Linux distros and works well in 
conjunction with sudo, which is why we love it so much.

Running Nano

You can run nano in two ways. To open nano with an empty buffer, just type in “nano” at the command prompt.

You can also use the following syntax:

nano /path/to/filename

Nano will follow the path and open that file if it exists. If it does not exist, it’ll 
start a new buffer with that filename in that directory.

Let’s take a look at the default nano screen.

At the top, you’ll see the name of the program and version number, the name 
of the file you’re editing, and whether the file has been modified since it was 
last saved. If you have a new file that isn’t saved yet, you’ll see “New Buffer.
” Next, you’ll see the contents of your document, a body of text. The third-line 
from the bottom is a “system message” line that displays information relevant to 
the program executing a function. Here, you can see that it says “New File.” Lastly, the final two rows at the bottom are what make this program very user-friendly: 
the shortcut lines.

It’s a WYSIWYG editor; “what you see is what you get.” What you type directly 
goes into the text input, unless you modify it with a key like Control or Meta. 
It’s pretty simple, so type some text out, or copy something and paste it into 
your terminal so we have something to play with.

Shortcuts

Program functions are referred to as “shortcuts” in nano, such as saving, quitting, justifying, etc. The most common ones are listed at the bottom of the screen, 
but there are many more that aren’t. Note that nano does not use the Shift key 
in shortcuts. All shortcuts use lowercase letters and unmodified number keys, 
so Ctrl+G is NOT Ctrl+Shift+G.

Hit Ctrl+G to bring up the Help documentation and scroll down to see a list of 
valid shortcuts.

When you’re done looking at the list, hit Ctrl+X to exit help.

Let’s say you’re working on a new text file, or “buffer,” and you want to save it.
This is called “writing out” and is executed by hitting Ctrl+O. You’ll be prompted 
for a filename to use, and the shortcuts at the bottom will change to reflect what you can enter to complete this particular command.

If you want to insert the contents of another file into your current buffer, you’d 
type Ctrl+R.

You can cancel both of the previous commands by typing Ctrl+C.

You can hit Escape twice instead of holding down the Control key, if you have 
trouble doing that. There are also some commands that require use of the Meta 
key. On most keyboard layouts, Meta equates to the Alt button.

When you want to quit nano, you just hit Ctrl+X. Nano will politely ask you if 
you want to save your buffer, and you can cancel this action as well.

Navigation

Now that we’ve got a hang of shortcuts, let’s get used to moving around a text 
file very quickly. Of course, you can always use the Home, End, Page Up, Page 
Down, and the arrow keys to get around, but that requires moving your fingers 
from the letters that we all love so much.


To move the cursor forward or backward, you can type Ctrl+F and Ctrl+B. To 
move up and down one line at a time, you can type Ctrl+P and Ctrl+N. In other words, you can use those keys instead of the Right, Left, Up, and Down arrows, respectively. Missing the Home and End keys? You can use Ctrl+A and Ctrl+E.
Want to move pages at a time instead? Ctrl+V moves down a page, and Ctrl+Y moves up a page.

But wait, there’s more! To move forward and backward one word at a time, you
can use Ctrl+Space and Meta+Space (remember, that’s Alt+Space). And, if 
you’re really in a rush, you can hit Ctrl+_ and then type in the line number, 
a comma, and the column number to jump straight there.

If you want to see where your cursor currently is, sort of like nano-GPS,
 hit Ctrl+C.

Copying, Cutting, and Pasting

When we want to copy text in graphical environment, we highlight it with the 
cursor. Similarly, in nano we “mark” it by using the Ctrl+^ command. You 
simply move the cursor to where you want to start marking, and then you hit 
Ctrl+^ to “set” it. This will mark everything between the starting point up to
 and NOT including the cursor.

Note that the cursor is on the empty space, and copying/cutting will not include
this space. You can also mark backwards from your “set” point. Be careful, 
however, as you can edit text while your marking. If you messed up, just hit 
Ctrl+^ again to unset the marker and you can start over.

To copy the marked text, hit Meta+^. If, instead, you want to cut the text,
hit Ctrl+K.

To Paste your text, move the cursor to a suitable position and hit Ctrl+U.

If you want to remove an entire line of text, simply hit Ctrl+K without 
highlighting anything. This sometimes comes in handy when editing 
configuration files.

Some Extra Shortcuts

You know how in notepad, you can force long lines of text to wrap-around
into what look like paragraphs? You can toggle that feature in nano with the
Meta+L shortcut. Since line wrapping is set to “on” by default, this usually 
comes in handy in the opposite way; for example, you’re writing a config file
and want to disable line-wrapping.

You can see that the line the cursor is on has a “$” at both the beginning and
end. This signifies that there’s more text both before and after the portion 
being displayed on screen.

If you want to search for a text string, hit Ctrl+W, and enter your search term.
This search can then be cancelled mid-execution by hitting Ctrl+C without
destroying your buffer.

The previous search term appears in the square brackets, and leaving the line
blank and hitting Enter will repeat that last search.

And after you get really comfortable, you can turn that helpful section at the
bottom off by hitting Meta+X to get more screen space for editing!

Some History

Nano was designed to be similar in look and feel to another program called Pico.
Pico was the default text editor of Pine, an email program from back in the day 
that wasn’t distributed with a GPL-friendly license. This meant that redistribution was somewhat of a fuzzy area, and so the TIP project was born. “TIP Isn’t Pico” added some functionality that Pico lacked and was licensed for free distribution,
and over time, became the nano we love to use today.