Nano

Nano is a simple editor. To open it and begin creating a new text file, type the following at the command line:

$ nano

Instead of a few lines of output, as you get with most commands in this book, the screen is taken over by the program as shown in Figure 1.

 Figure 1. Opening screen for nano

The screen is no longer a place to execute commands; it has become a text editor. Since we typed nano by itself, we have the text editor open with a new (blank) file. We could also open an existing file by typing something like:

$ nano textfile.txt

The text from the file is now displayed within nano.

Exiting nano

To exit nano, hold down the Ctrl key and press the x key (a combination we call CTRL-X in this book).  If you have created some text but have not yet saved it, nano will ask:

$ Save modified buffer (ANSWERING "No" WILL DESTROY CHANGES) ? 

To save the changes, just type y. To abandon your changes, type n.

If you haven't typed anything into a new file, you have nothing to save so nano will just exit without saying anything.

To save changes without exiting, press Ctrl-o.  Nano will ask you for the filename in which to save the text:

$ File Name to Write:

Type the name of the file, and press the Enter key.  For instance:

$ File Name to Write: textfile.txt

Exploring Files

You can move around the file and view different parts using the arrow keys. This is a very fast and responsive way to explore a file.