Editing text files on the command line

Most popular text editors: Vi and Nano

Vi

The default editor that comes with the UNIX operating system is called vi.

Two modes:

• Command mode
• Insert mode

In the command mode, every character typed is a command that does something to the text file being edited.

In the insert mode, every character typed is added to the text in the file. Pressing <Esc> turns off the insert mode.

Start Vi

Edit file readme.txt:

$ vi readme.txt

Recover file readme.txt (that was being edited when system crashed):

$ vi -r readme.txt

Exit from Vi

There are several ways to quit vi:

:x  quit vi, writing out modified file to file named in original invocation
:wq  -> quit vi, writing out modified file to file named in original invocation
:q  -> quit (or exit) vi
:q!  -> quit vi even though latest changes have not been saved for this vi call

Commands

• Inserting text: i
• Inserting text (beginning current line): I
• Inserting text (ending current line): A
• Deleting single character: x
• Deleting entire current line: dd
• Searching string in text: /string
• Saving file: :w

More: http://www.cs.colostate.edu/helpdocs/vi.html

Nano

Start Nano

Edit file readme.txt:

nano readme.txt