Nano
nano
is an open-source text editor that can be used to write programs.
Background
Pine
was a text-based email client written in 1989 and released publicly in 1992 by the University of Washington. For writing emails, Pine
had an integrated text editor called Pico
-- short for Pine composition. Due to how easy Pico
was to use, people began using it outside of Pine
for more general things such as writing documents and code. Unfortunately, the licensing terms for Pico
were not acceptable for the open-source software movement, and thus an open-source clone, nano
, was created.
Pros
- Between
emacs
,vim
, andnano
,nano
is likely the easiest editor for first-time users - Simple key combinations for commands
- Features include:
- Syntax highlighting for programming
- Cut & paste
- File insertion
- Position saving between sessions
- Word wrap
- Adjustable scrolling
- Find & replace
- Line/column display
- Automatic indentation
- Jump to line/column
Cons
Usage instructions...
.nano
rc
.nanorc
refers to a file that can be placed in your home directory that will enable certain features in nano
by default. By default nano
will have few, if any, options enabled. All of these options can be enabled via flags when launching nano
, or the .nanorc
file can be created/modified such that the options do not have to be included manually.
For example, nano -S file.cpp
will open file.cpp
with smooth scrolling enabled, however the set smooth
option can be placed in .nano
rc so that nano file.cpp
without the flag will still have smooth scrolling enabled.
Some useful .nanorc
features are as follows:
-
set smooth
- To enable smooth scrolling. By default, when scrolling down or up past the viewable area,nano
will load multiple lines. If you want to have it only go up or down by 1 line instead, enable this option -
include /usr/share/nano/c.nanorc
- Includes features that enable syntax highlighting in C/C++ -
set tabsize n
- Sets the tab size to n columns instead of the default 8 -
set undo
- Enable undo/redo functionality
More .nanorc
options can be found here: https://www.nanoeditor.org/dist/v2.1/nanorc.5.html