Shell and DoC Systems

Make sure you’re in ~/modules/shell/misc, and make an empty file, mynotes.txt:

username@MACHINE:misc$ touch mynotes.txt

To edit this file from within the terminal, we can use the program nano. This is a simple text editor designed to work using keyboard commands only—without the use of a mouse.

Although nano won’t be the main editor you use for writing code, it’s useful for quick edits to files—and very useful if you’re logged in to a machine without a graphical user interface. (For instance if you’re logged in remotely, from home.)

Let’s edit mynotes.txt.

username@MACHINE:misc$ nano mynotes.txt

You’ll see something like the following:

You can proceed to edit the file, just as you would using any other editor.

• To move the cursor around, use the cursor keys instead of the mouse.
• To save the file, use Ctrl+O. Hit Enter to confirm the output file name.
• To exit the editor, use Ctrl+X. If you have edited the file, nano will ask whether you would like to save the changes. Type Y for yes, and hit Enter to confirm the output file name.

You’ll see that nano gives you some hints at the bottom of the window, with ^ meaning Ctrl.

Exercise 11

1. Write some text in the file mynotes.txt, and save it.
2. Exit nano, and view details of the file using ls -l. (Notice that the size of the file now corresponds to the amount of text you’ve saved in it.)