Content-type: text/html Manpage of NANO

NANO

Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: November 1, 2002
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NAME

nano - Nano's ANOther editor, an enhanced free Pico clone

SYNOPSIS

nano [+LINE] [options] [file]

DESCRIPTION

This manual page documents briefly the nano command.

nano is a small, free and friendly editor which aims to replace Pico, the default editor included in the non-free Pine package. Rather than just copying Pico's look and feel, nano also implements some missing (or disabled by default) features in Pico, such as "search and replace" and "go to line number".

OPTIONS

+LINE: Places cursor at LINE on startup.
-B (--backup): When saving a file, back up the previous version of it to the current filename suffixed with a ~.
-D (--dos): Write file in DOS format.
-F (--multibuffer): Enable multiple file buffers, if available.
-H (--historylog): Log search and replace strings to ~/.nano_history so they may be stored for later editing, if nanorc support is configured.
-I (--ignorercfiles): Don't look at $SYSCONFDIR/nanorc or ~/.nanorc, if nanorc support is available.
-K (--keypad): Do not use the ncurses keypad() call unless necessary. Try this flag if you find that the arrow keys on the numeric keypad do not work for you under nano.
-M (--mac): Write file in Mac format.
-N (--noconvert): Disable automatic conversion of files from DOS/Mac format.
-Q str (--quotestr=str): Set the quoting string for justifying. The default is "^([ \t]*[|>:}#])+" if regular expression support is available, or "> " otherwise.
-R (--regexp): Enable regular expression matching for search strings, as well as \n subexpression replacement for replace strings, if available.
-S (--smooth): Enable smooth scrolling. Text will scroll line-by-line, instead of the usual chunk-by-chunk behavior.
-T num (--tabsize=num): Set the size (width) of a tab.
-V (--version): Show the current version number and author.
-Y str (--syntax=str): Specify a specific syntax highlighting from the .nanorc to use, if available.
-c (--const): Constantly show the cursor position.
-h (--help): Display a summary of command line options.
-i (--autoindent): Indent new lines to the previous line's indentation. Useful when editing source code.
-k (--cut): Enable cut from cursor to end of line with ^K.
-l (--nofollow): If the file being edited is a symbolic link, replace the link with a new file, do not follow it. Good for editing files in /tmp, perhaps?
-m (--mouse): Enable mouse support (if available for your system).
-o dir (--operatingdir=dir): Set operating directory. Makes nano set up something similar to a chroot.
-p (--preserve): Preserve the XON and XOFF sequences (^Q and ^S) so they will be caught by the terminal.
-r cols (--fill=cols): Wrap lines at column cols. By default, this is the width of the screen, less eight. If this value is negative, wrapping will occur at cols columns from the right of the screen, allowing the wrap point to vary along with the screen width if resized.
-s prog (--speller=prog): Enable alternative spell checker command.
-t (--tempfile): Always save changed buffer without prompting. Same as Pico -t option.
-v (--view): View file (read only) mode.
-w (--nowrap): Disable wrapping of long lines.
-x (--nohelp): Disable help screen at bottom of editor.
-z (--suspend): Enable suspend ability.
-a, -b, -e, -f, -g, -j: Ignored, for compatibility with Pico.

INITIALIZATION FILE

nano will read initialization files in the following order: $SYSCONFDIR/nanorc, then ~/.nanorc. Please see the example file nanorc.sample which should be provided with nano. All lines beginning with a hash symbol ( # ) are considered comments and will be ignored. The following commands are understood in the initialization file:

[un]set option [value]: Set (or unset) the flag option. Any long option listed above can be set or unset by removing the leading dashes (e.g. "set nowrap"). If the option takes an argument it will be set to value.

COLOR SYNTAX HIGHLIGHTING (if supported by your curses library)

syntax str [fileregex ... ]: Defines a syntax named str which can be activated via the -Y flag, or will be automatically activated if the current filename matches fileregex. All following color statements will apply to syntax until a new syntax is defined.
color fgcolor[,bgcolor] regex ...: For the currently defined syntax, display all expressions matching regex with foreground color fgcolor and optional background color bgcolor. Legal colors for foreground and background color are: white, black, red, blue, green, yellow, magenta, and cyan. You may use the prefix "bright" to force a stronger color highlight. If your terminal supports transparency, not specifying a bgcolor tells nano to attempt to use a transparent background.
color fgcolor[,bgcolor] start=sr end=er: Display expressions which start with sr and end with er with foreground color fgcolor and optional background color bgcolor. This allows syntax highlighting to span multiple lines. Note that all subsequent instances of sr after an initial sr is found will be highlighted until the first instance of er.

NOTES

nano will try to dump the buffer into an emergency file in some cases. Mainly, this will happen if nano receives a SIGHUP or SIGTERM or runs out of memory, when it will write the buffer into a file named "nano.save" if the buffer didn't have a name already, or will add a ".save" suffix to the current filename. If an emergency file with that name already exists in the current directory, ".save" and a number (e.g. ".save.1") will be suffixed to the current filename in order to make it unique. In multibuffer mode, nano will write all the open buffers to the respective emergency files.

BUGS

Please send any comments or bug reports to
nano@nano-editor.org.
The nano mailing list is available from
nano-devel@gnu.org. To subscribe, email to nano-devel-request@gnu.org with a subject of "subscribe".

HOMEPAGE

http://www.nano-editor.org

AUTHOR

Chris Allegretta <chrisa@asty.org>, et al (see AUTHORS and THANKS for details). This manual page was originally written by Jordi Mallach <jordi@sindominio.net>, for the Debian GNU system (but may be used by others).

This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages.
Time: 14:15:34 GMT, February 04, 2003