Sometimes, you may need to open a file and go at exact line or column. If the file does not exist, nano will try to create it. The above command will try to open the file “ my_text_file.txt” from your home directory. To open a file you can run: $ nano ~/my_text_file.txt Create New File in Nano Open a File in Nano This will open the editor and upon saving the file, it will ask you to give it a name with which the new file will be saved.

Nano Editor Shortcut Keys Create a New File in NanoĬreating new file is simple as running nano: $ nano You will notice that some shortcuts can be used with single key.įor example F1 key to get help or F2 to exit nano. You can get the full list of keyboard combinations by pressing ^G (or press F1) which will open nano’s help menu. You don’t need to remember each option as it is always in front of you. One thing you should know is that a keyboard shortcut represented with ^ and a symbol (for example ^W) is a combination of the Ctrl key and that symbol ( Ctrl+W in our example).Ī combination that is shown to start with M means that it needs to be completed by pressing Alt key and the following symbol.īelow are listed the options that you will see when you first open nano: They change automatically depending on what action you are taking. Those combinations are really easy and are visible while you edit your file. Nano uses keyboard combinations for different functions, such as to find text in a file, justify text etc. If for any reason nano is not already installed on your Linux distro, you should be able to easily install it with the following commands: # apt install nano It has plenty of useful features such as syntax coloring, line numbering, easy search and many others. It is often preferred by new users because of its simplicity, compared to other command line text editors such as vi/vim and emacs.

Nano is a command line text editor, that comes preinstalled in almost every Linux distribution.

Linux quick text paste