Shell Editors

Intended for Centos or Redhat.

Shell text editor nano

nano is the basic text editor that should already be installed in your distribution, it is the simplest editor.

Launch the editor

nano
  • ctrl + x to exit (it will ask to save before quiting)
  • ctrl + r to open a file, write down the path
  • ctrl + w will search for a word
  • ctrl + k will copy the line
  • ctrl + u will paste the line
  • alt + / to go at the end of the file
  • alt + \ to go at the beginning of the file
  • ctrl + o to write or save in a new or old file

VIM

VIM is a shell editor similar to Emacs that can be used in command line. It has multiple features and can be very powerful for text editing. There are more here for the commands.

To launch the command line editing tool

vim

To open filename in this depository

vim /home/usr/filename

insert mode

  • Insert press insert key on the keyboard to start editing the file
  • Esc. pres the esc. key to quit the insert mode
  • :help for Help
  • :%s/word/test/i to replace word by test, i means that it is not case-sensitive
  • :w /home/usr/filename to write with w the newly created filename in /home/usr
  • :wq to write (save) the file and then quit
  • :q to exit
  • :q! to force quit without saving

command mode

  • d d delete the selected line
  • y y Copy the selected line
  • p past the line where the cursor is or at the end by default
  • $ Go to the end of the line
  • 0 Go to the beginning of the line
  • e Go the end of the word to the right

Emacs

Emacs is a shell editor similar to VIM that can be used in command line. It has multiple features and can be very powerful for text editing.

Install emacs text file editor, because it’s not by default on all distribution

sudo apt-get install emacs
  • ctrl + x then 1 enlarges the editing window
  • ctrl + x then ctrl + w allows to write the content in a different file
  • ctrl + k then y allows cutting and past the line

Stream Editor - sed

sed is a stream editor for RedHat and CentOS, it reads a file line by line and displays the output on the screen (does not save by default in the input file). Mainly use for search and replace a term in a file

The -n stop lines from being written, '1~2p' will print every 2 lines for file

sed -n '1~2p' file

this ill delete every second line

sed '1~2d' file

It will with s substitute/change word by test, the g is for all occurrences

sed 's/word/test/g'

Start at the beginning of the line (^) then look at any (.) characters starting by 0 (*0) Then substitute it by nothing (//).

sed 's/^.*0//'