Index->Editors Editors Overview and Goals At the completion of this lab, you will be able to... create, edit, and save a file using a stand-alone editor The following utilities are used in this lab: emacs(1), joe(1), nano(1) vi(1), kate, kedit, kwrite Choices, Choices There are lots of editors available for Linux. In the EOS lab, we have (at least) six to choose from. So how do you choose? First, you could choose to learn all of them. However, it is more practical to learn one editor well, than to barely know all of them. joe and nano are probably the most user-friendly editors. They don't require you to memorize bizarre key combinations to do basic editing tasks. vi and emacs are UNIX workhorses. They are extremely powerful, but can be confusing to beginning users. nano is probably the easiest but least powerful editor available in the EOS lab. It provides basic text editing, and that's about it. joe is a fairly simple editor that can do a little more than basic text editing. To learn more about joe, read its online manual. vi is an extremely powerful text editor that is available on all UNIX systems. Although easier to use, joe and nano may not be available everywhere. If you learn vi, you will ensure that you can edit files on any UNIX system. VIM (vi Improved) adds a large number of features to the basic vi editor, including its graphics mode cousin (gvim). I recommend you to start with gvim if you want to learn vi. The menu bar help you to quickly find command that you need. Click here for an introduction to vi. Emacs is another extremely powerful text editor. In fact, it is more than a text editor. From within emacs you can browse the web, read email, chat with friends, as well as edit files. To find more information on emacs, click here . You can find a nice quick reference by clicking here. Kate is designed for editing computer programs. It has syntax highlighting feature. If you want something simple, learn nano. If you want something more standard and available on any UNIX or linux system then consider vi. Features that helps me significantly for writing computer programs: Auto indentation Syntax highlighting Show matching parentheses, curly braces, brackets (the '%' key) Auto comment block character insertion Questions Turn in your answer to the following questions: Using the editor of your choice, describe how you would do each of the following operations, a shortcut is preferred. I expect you to learn the important shortcuts because they can be useful to save time in editing for source code later on. [You MUST type your answers using the editor of your choice.] File operation Open a file for editing Save a file after editing Cursor movement Move the cursor to the next line Move the cursor to the previous line Move the cursor left 1 position Move the cursor right 1 position Move the cursor to the beginning of the current line Move the cursor to the end of the current line Scroll down a whole page/screen Scroll up a whole page/screen Search A string of text forward A string of text backward Go to a particular line number Insert, Delete, Replace Insert a text at the current position Insert a text at the end of a line Insert a text at the beginning of a line Insert an indented line Delete a character at the current position Delete the whole line Replace all occurence of a string with a new string Top