Nano

The nano text editor is a clone and free software alternative to the Pico editor and is covered under the GNU GPL. (Pico is distributed under a very restrictive licence). Besides basic emulation, nano also has the following other features:

• GNU autoconf support.
• Goto line and replace functions (without needing command-line flags).
• Interactive replace function and spell checker.
• Auto-indent support.
• Slang curses-wrapper support.
• Variable displayed tab width.
• Regular expression search and replace.
• Toggles for command-line flags from within the editor.

By default nano has something called hard word wrap. This means that when a line doesn't fit in the window, nano will insert a hard break. When editing configuration files this can be very harmful since breaking a line in to two lines can break the whole configuration. To disable this feature start nano with the -w switch:

  nano -w [yourfile]

(using [ ] means that what is inside can optionally be omitted)

installing

First you must install nano by doing this in a terminal

# rpm –i nano-2.0.1-1.i386.rpm

Nano is then installed.

External links

• GNU nano webpage (www.gnu.org)
• nano-2.0.1-1.i386.rpm