text editors

Vim

vim is a very popular file editor, especially among programmers. It’s actively developed and frequently updated, and there’s a very big community around it.

vi in modern systems is just an alias to vim , which means vi im proved. You start it by running vi on the command line.

You can specify a filename at invocation time to edit that specific file:

vi test.txt

You have to know that Vim has 2 main modes:

• command (or normal) mode

• insert mode

When you start the editor, you are in command mode. You can’t enter text like you expect from a GUI-based editor. You have to enter insert mode. You can do this by pressing the i key. Once you do so, the -- INSERT -- word appear at the bottom of the editor.

Now you can start typing and filling the screen with the file contents.

You can move around the file with the arrow keys, or using the h -j -k - l keys. h-l for left-right,j-k for down-up. Once you are done editing you can press the esc key to exit insert mode, and go back to command mode.

At this point you can navigate the file, but you can’t add content to it (and be careful which keys you press as they might be commands).

One thing you might want to do now is saving the file. You can do so by pressing : (colon), then w .

You can save and quit pressing : then w and q : :wq

You can quit without saving, pressing : then q and ! : :q!

You can undo and edit by going to command mode and pressing u . You can redo (cancel an undo) by pressing ctrl-r .

Those are the basics of working with Vim. From here starts a rabbit hole we can’t go into in this little introduction.

I will only mention those commands that will get you started editing with Vim:

• pressing the x key deletes the character currently highlighted

• pressing A goes at the end of the currently selected line

• press 0 to go to the start of the line

• go to the first character of a word and press d followed by w to delete that word. If you follow it with e instead of w , the white space before the next word is preserved

• use a number between d and w to delete more than 1 word, for example use d3w to delete 3 words forward

• press d followed by d to delete a whole entire line.

• Press d followed by $ to delete the entire line from where the cursor is, until the end

To find out more about Vim try running vimtutor command,which sholud be already installed in your system.

Emacs

emacs is an awesome editor and it’s historically regarded as the editor for UNIX systems. Famously vi vs emacs flame wars and heated discussions caused many unproductive hours for developers around the world. emacs is very powerful.

it is` not usually installed in the some linux distro. so,you can install it using

sudo apt-get install emacs

You can open a new emacs session simply by invoking emacs in the command line.

You can also edit an existing file calling emacs <filename>.You can start editing and once you are done, press ctrl-x followed by ctrl-w . You confirm the folder and Emacs tell you the file exists, asking you if it should overwrite it Answer y , and you get a confirmation of success.

You can exit Emacs pressing ctrl-x followed byctrl-c . Or ctrl-x followed byc (keep ctrl pressed).

There is a lot to know about Emacs. More than I am able to write in this little introduction. I encourage you to open Emacs and press ctrl-h r to open the built-in manual and ctrl-h t to open the official tutorial.

Copy,cut and paste shortcuts:

Moving cursor:

Miscellaneous shortcuts:

Search and Replace:

Nano

This is a another powerful command line text editor.This is also powerful and quite a useful text editor.

Mostly linux distro and macOS already have this editor installed.that you can chcek using:

nano --version

if you see that tell you the version then it is already installed in case if doesn’t show then you can install using this:

sudo apt-get install nano

The main syntax to open Nano and to edit a certain file is:

nano filename

However, if you are in another folder, and you want to open a file (demo.txt) in /path/to/directory, you can enter this line instead:

nano /path/to/directory/demo.txt

If you enter a file name and that file is not present in the directory, Nano will create a new file. Meanwhile, if you only execute the nano command without specifying the file name, the Nano text editor will create an empty untitled file and ask for a name when you exit the editor.

After running the nano command, a new window will pop up where you can freely edit the file. Just use the arrow keys on your keyboard to move the cursor around the text.

At the bottom of the window, you can find some shortcuts to use with the Nano editor. The “^” (caret) means that you must press CTRL (Windows) or control (macOS) to use the chosen command. Here are a few examples.

• Press CTRL + O to save the changes made in the file and continue editing.

• To exit from the editor, press CTRL + X. If there are changes, it will ask you whether to save them or not. Input Y for Yes, or N for No, then press Enter. But if there are no changes, you will exit the editor right away.

Basic Nano Text Editor Commands

We have compiled the most useful commands to help you utilize the Nano text editor more effectively.