[HN Gopher] Nano 5.7
___________________________________________________________________
Nano 5.7
Author : lelf
Score : 112 points
Date : 2021-04-29 13:28 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lists.gnu.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (lists.gnu.org)
| staticassertion wrote:
| Learning from this HN thread that apparently Nano gets hate. I've
| been programming for years, nano is still my go-to for "I'm in
| the terminal and I need to make a small modification". I use it
| daily.
| nucleardog wrote:
| That's what it's perfect for.
|
| If you asked me, given no prior knowledge of any editor,
| whether I'd want to be dropped in nano or vim to make some
| random modifications somewhere it would be nano hands down.
| It's significantly easier to use and significantly more
| discoverable with the menu.
|
| On the other hand vim is borderline a programming language for
| text.
|
| It's kind of a slog at first. It's climbing a cliff to learn
| the basics, and that that point it's barely more productive
| than any other editor. Or maybe still less productive because a
| lot of simple operations are things you end up still having to
| go to Google for and spend some time reading through
| documentation.
|
| But there's some point where you kind of get up that cliff and
| over the top of the mountain and it all sort of comes together
| on the downslope. Things start to become a bit more intuitive
| and become _easy_. You start to see the ways that a bunch of
| the little atomic bits you've learned can be chained together
| to create complex operations.
|
| At that's the point where vim really shines. Once you hit that
| point it's kinda tough going back to anything else because it
| feels like working with one hand tied behind your back.
|
| And that's all available... everywhere. Gui, terminal, local,
| remote, there's really no setup required beyond a `apt-get
| install vim` or `pkg install vim-console`.
|
| But yeah, no hate on nano any more than I'd hate screwdrivers
| because drills exist. They're totally different tools.
| crocarneiro wrote:
| Same here. I think it's better for small modifications. I find
| CTRL+o CTRL+x faster than ESC + :x, also there is no need to
| enter an edit mode. But at the end of the day is a matter of
| taste.
| villgax wrote:
| Reminds me how how Basecamp would have acted during WW2 as well.
| Nothing to do with business so take it outside.
| vharuck wrote:
| I use nano when writing short Python or bash scripts in Termux
| for my Android phone. Is there a different editor I should try?
| Note that this isn't a common activity, so I'm likely to forget
| key bindings. I like how nano always displays those at the
| bottom.
| siver_john wrote:
| Nah, nano is probably fine for what you are doing. It excels at
| quick short edits.
| azabua wrote:
| For those who use an actual editor https://www.vimconf.live/ Heh
| can one imagine a conference for NANO?
| bdcravens wrote:
| No, I honestly can't imagine why you'd need a conference for a
| tool. Maybe I'm missing something and the construction industry
| is similarly excited about DrillConf or TruckConf.
| _joel wrote:
| I get your point but there are all sorts of conferences and
| conventions. Obscure subject conferences are not just for
| tech :) https://www.worktruckshow.com/ and there's even one
| for concrete https://concreteshow.co.uk/
| cjohnson318 wrote:
| I'm in oil and gas and I can say I'm _pretty_ excited about
| DrillConf.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Nano was a good alternative on Unix-likes in the old days for
| config files and such, since very few alternatives existed.
| However, CUA keybindings were a sore point. It could be almost
| configured to use them, but dragging config files around to every
| box was a chore.
|
| About tenish years ago, I found "ne" and it was a bit better, but
| not a slam dunk.
|
| A few years ago, I found "micro". It is what I always wanted, the
| simplicity of a CUA editor on Unix that I've used from DOS edit,
| to Notepad(++), to current GUI editors and IDEs, etc. I'd like a
| menu widget also, but that's a nitpick really.
|
| Anyway, since it is packaged in Debian/Ubuntu now I've little use
| for nano. I no longer tolerate programs with unique keybindings,
| sane standards are a must.
| bulibuta wrote:
| I love the release motto in Romanian and what it references!
|
| On topic (sic!): Hardcore vim-user, loving and recommending nano
| to every new Unix user. Guess I'm schizophrenic according to
| current HN comments.
| fouric wrote:
| As a vim and emacs user, I don't give nano any hate.
|
| I'm _surprised_ when programmers use it, sure, but that 's
| because if my profession was going to require editing text files
| for hours a day (which it does), I would be happy to trade a
| steeper learning curve now for a less unpleasant job experience
| later.
|
| I totally understand why non-programmers don't use it. If your
| job does _not_ involve you editing text files for hours a day,
| then nano (or a graphical editor - gedit, kedit, notepad?) is
| inarguably a better choice for you than emacs or vim - the effort
| involved will probably never pay off.
|
| ed users: you have my respect, which I will dispense from a
| distance.
| CivBase wrote:
| I've always been surprised by nano's ubiquity since it comes
| across to me as a very niche application. It's a highly-
| accessible, bare-bones text editor... for a terminal, where the
| overwhelming majority of users will be "power users" who will
| likely value the additional features made available by vim or
| emacs. It's not a bad tool. I just seems to be designed for a
| very small demographic.
| jejones3141 wrote:
| One thing I've found nano useful for: git commit messages.
|
| If the commit file is empty, that cancels the commit. Nano will
| tell me how many lines it actually wrote, so if I have second
| thoughts I can cancel with certainty. Nano may well not be
| unique in that regard, but I tripped over another editor that
| saved what I thought was an empty file as a single line with
| just the EOL character.
| MayeulC wrote:
| I like to quit vim with a non-zero return value in some
| exceptional cases. git and most other tools will interpret
| this as "something bad happened" and won't do anything
| further :cq
| jolmg wrote:
| You can have a bunch of comments and empty lines, even with
| spaces, and git will still abort if you don't have anything
| else in the commit message. An EOL/newline character
| shouldn't cause the commit to continue.
| chungy wrote:
| There are overrides to make empty messages or including
| otherwise-comments, but yeah... you have to do such things
| rather explicitly. No way you can do it by accident.
| jolmg wrote:
| But none accept a single newline as a message while at
| the same time rejecting truly empty messages.
| hiq wrote:
| I rarely write commit messages until they're ready, so I
| usually :q! when I realize I actually don't want to commit
| just yet.
| umvi wrote:
| Linus Torvalds said he might switch to nano for his daily
| driver[0]
|
| >[Text editing is] all done in a traditional terminal, although
| I don't use 'vi'. I use this abomination called "micro-emacs",
| which has absolutely nothing to do with GNU emacs except that
| some of the key bindings are similar. I got used to it at the
| University of Helsinki when I was a wee lad, and I've not been
| able to wean myself from it, although I suspect I will have to
| soon enough. I hacked up (a very limited) utf-8 support for it
| a few years ago, but it's really showing its age, and showing
| all the signs of having been written in the 80's and the
| version I use was a fork that hasn't been maintained since the
| mid 90's.
|
| > University of Helsinki used it because it worked on DOS,
| VAX/VMS and Unix, which is why I got introduced to it. And now
| my fingers are hardcoded for it. I really need to switch over
| to something that is actually maintained and does utf-8
| properly. Probably 'nano'. But my hacked-up piece of historical
| garbage works just barely well enough that I've never been
| really forced to teach my old fingers new tricks.
|
| [0] https://www.tag1consulting.com/blog/interview-linus-
| torvalds...
| reidrac wrote:
| I used joe for a while, basically because it was installed at
| the Uni's labs (and because I had used WordStar on DOS). vi
| (or vim, can't remeber) was misconfigured with terrible
| defaults, so basically I got used to joe.
|
| It was very hard to force myself to stop using it and learn
| vi!
| emondi wrote:
| Wouldn't modifying some GNU emacs shortcuts to his liking be
| easier than mantaining that editor?
| powersnail wrote:
| Productive people are just lazy in a different way.
| garyrob wrote:
| Personally I use jstar (a configuration of Joe) because in the
| 80's I used WordStar and I like using the same key combos. :)
|
| But that's for small editing tasks. For coding I use VSCode or
| a JetBrains product.
| unixhero wrote:
| Check out jed!
| cicero wrote:
| Upvote for mentioning WordStar. I only used it some in the
| Texas A&M computer lab. I went from my dad's Apple II, to a
| Commodore 64 I bought in college, to a Macintosh after I
| graduated. None of them were WordStar platforms, but I
| remember it was very popular in the CP/M and MS-DOS world
| before WordPerfect took over.
| garyrob wrote:
| Yeah, my programming OS was CP/M
| Ekaros wrote:
| I personally prefer nano over vi, ed or emacs. But when I do
| some programming or bigger work I use proper IDE like Visual
| Studio Code or Eclipse.
|
| It's decent enough for times when you want to do something
| quick on cli. And then spend rest of the time with graphical
| IDEs...
| noir_lord wrote:
| Same - I use nano for quick edits on remote boxes or locally
| but for programming I use intellij.
|
| I totally get why people use vim (and emacs) in fact I use
| vim for one specific thing I can not do in intellij
| (highlight closing parens in docblocks - intellij doesn't do
| it and if you are writing annotations it's a major pita that
| it doesnt).
| Avery3R wrote:
| I wouldn't call vs code an IDE, it's closer to a text editor
| potta_coffee wrote:
| VSCode has intellisense, debugger, console, etc. It
| definitely fills a niche between a text editor and an IDE,
| IMO.
| robsonhn wrote:
| So does vim though. I use on vim the same language
| servers as VSCode.
| PandawanFr wrote:
| With all the extensions available, you can get pretty close
| to a full IDE
| kijin wrote:
| Same here. I like nano because it's a simple and intuitive
| editor that doesn't do much (though it does have some
| surprisingly powerful features once you know the shortcuts).
| I already have a full-blown IDE running on another screen and
| I don't want to spend any energy trying to stay on top of
| another one.
|
| In other words, I would not use nano as my primary editor,
| but it's perfect as a secondary. If I need to edit more than
| a few lines, I'll just load up the file on my usual IDE.
| ChrisClark wrote:
| Yeah, for quick edits I prefer nano. Might just be because I
| grew up with edit on DOS, and Out of the vi, emacs and nano it
| was the closest and I just stuck with it.
|
| Any programming I do is in Jetbrain IDEs.
|
| But I saw a comment here long ago that says it's worth learning
| vim keybinds, even if you never use vim. Because you can be
| sure, no matter what IDE or editor you end up using, someone
| has created a vim keybinds plugin. You can have the same
| keybinds across everything.
|
| I've never gotten around to learning though.
| Arnavion wrote:
| Meh, that vim keybinds thing is an exaggeration. Using arrows
| keys for moving the cursor, holding down Ctrl for jumping
| words, holding down Shift for selection, etc is even more
| consistent across editors, and doesn't even need any plugins.
| ChrisClark wrote:
| I was more thinking of the benefits of vim-style, the
| advanced controls for moving and jumping around according
| to code structure. Not just jumping a word at a time, but
| jumping to a character, deleting a word, sentence, block,
| etc.
|
| Those are not always standardized across editors.
| Arnavion wrote:
| Deleting a word - Ctrl-Delete. Deleting a line - Shift-
| Delete.
|
| Jumping to a character, deleting a block - while vim does
| have bindings for these, I've never found myself using
| them. For the latter especially, moving to the start of
| the block and then selecting to the end of the block is
| better to me just because it lines up with my eyes
| scanning the thing I'm planning to delete. With vim I
| would have to pause and double-check what I'm about to
| delete anyway, and if it doesn't fit in one page I'd have
| to move around to inspect it anyway.
| marcodiego wrote:
| More than that, Benno Schulenberg, nano's main developer, is
| actively against changes turn nano into anything close to a
| mini-IDE. He rejected patches that could nano have code
| completion from external tools, multi-pane/screens, source code
| navigation and many others.
|
| I respect his lead, but that discourages contribution.
|
| Disclaimer: I'm a very sporadic nano contributor.
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| > that discourages contribution
|
| I wouldn't say it does so across the board. Rather, it
| filters contributions to only encourage those of the kind
| they desire.
|
| There's also the question of whether they even want "more
| contribution". The less features, the less maintenance
| burden... Less maintenance burden, easier for fewer people to
| accomplish the work... Fewer people means less coordinating
| effort.
|
| Simplicity seems to lead to a virtuous cycle here.
| ponow wrote:
| In other words, Schulenberg doesn't want nano to slide on a
| slippery slope towards emacs.
| blueblob wrote:
| Yeah, how could you hate on anyone who uses the standard text
| editor?[0]
|
| [0] https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.html
| bear8642 wrote:
| you joke, but ed is great if have tiny change to make given
| compiler output simply just to how fast it loads
| kstrauser wrote:
| I got a local login on a machine so busted that I couldn't
| mount /usr, meaning I couldn't read /usr/share/terminfo,
| meaning no screen editors would work. I knew _just_ enough
| ed that I was able to fix /etc/fstab and bring the system
| up.
|
| I wouldn't wanna use it every day, but it has its time and
| place.
| donio wrote:
| "busybox vi" is another option in these situations when
| that's available. It will happily run in a blank chroot.
|
| Everybody should know a little ed though, it's not that
| hard.
| kstrauser wrote:
| It was on a server that didn't have busybox installed.
| Also, can busybox vi work without access to termcap or
| terminfo?
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Honestly at that point, unless your fstab is really big,
| I'd just `cat /etc/fstab` and then `cat >/etc/fstab
| <<EOF` and very carefully retype it (I mean take a backup
| first of course).
| kstrauser wrote:
| sed is also a friend in these situations.
| cicero wrote:
| I used to use ed when all I had was a single terminal
| screen/window and a compiler error message. Ed doesn't
| clear the screen, so you can still see the message. Vi or
| emacs would clear the error message away. Of course, in a
| multi-window situation, the compiler output is usually in
| one window or pane and the editor in another, so this is
| moot now.
| xfer wrote:
| This is what i used to edit configurations in plan9 console
| if you don't have graphics support(over serial console) or to
| fix issues before starting rio. It is surprisingly pretty
| decent experience.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| Its more like using the right tool for what you actually want
| to do.
|
| 0. Use cat and output to a file to really quickly make a new
| file from your clipboard or from the web
|
| 1. Nano is great for editing config / text files quickly and
| the learning curve is really low due to a more modern design.
|
| 2. vim can be reliably found everywhere on nearly any unix
| machine but the learning curve is much higher initial learning
| curve vim has more customization than vi and has basically
| replaced vi on modern installations of unix
|
| 3. emacs has out of the box has a learning curve less than vi
| but can't be found everywhere and you probably have to install
| it but it also has a large amount of extendability. the initial
| learning curve is a bit low but then it gets higher and higher.
| It also has multiple versions and a GUI and a package manager.
| bityard wrote:
| > due to a more modern design
|
| nano is a clone of pico, the text editor for the pine email
| client, so "modern" is definitely a matter of some
| interpretation here. :)
| gbear605 wrote:
| It's more similar to modern text editors, but yes it's
| definitely more of a precursor
| fouric wrote:
| > Nano is great for editing config / text files quickly
|
| emacsclient makes it just as easy to edit a text file
| extremely quickly with Emacs as to open a new vim or nano in
| place.
|
| > emacs [...] initial learning curve is a bit low but then it
| gets higher and higher
|
| Emacs's difficulty is, for simple editing cases that you
| could use nano for, only a little bit more difficult than
| nano, and certainly easier than vim - no modal editing, and
| you can learn the essential shortcuts (save, undo, open,
| close) in very little time.
|
| I don't agree that the learning curve increases - more
| complex things require that you learn more about Emacs, sure,
| but my experience has been that it's about as easy to go from
| beginner to intermediate Vim knowledge as it is in Emacs, if
| not slightly easier due to the latter's better design and
| documentation.
|
| > emacs [...] can't be found everywhere
|
| TRAMP has been around for two decades now, making this
| largely irrelevant -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26982916
| ch_123 wrote:
| As someone who has invested time into vim, I can edit text
| files with it much quicker than I could with nano. I also
| suspect someone with sufficient nano experience may be as
| capable of coding in nano as I am in vim.
|
| "Use the right tool for the job" is all well and good (I
| mean, who wants to use the _wrong_ tool for a job?) but can
| lead to false dichotomies around tools which are designed to
| solve the same fundamental problems/use cases. I would posit
| that the model you suggest only is applicable to people with
| limited experience with vim, nano (and/or emacs). I would
| generally recommend that someone picks one and runs with it.
| tpoacher wrote:
| I think your opinion simply reflects a degree of ignorance of
| nano's actual capabilities, rather than a genuine surprise at
| human behaviour. If anything, your comparison to gedit/notepad
| (notepad??? seriously???) makes that much clear.
|
| Honestly I don't mind vim, but I prefer nano. And I spend 24/7
| coding in my terminal. Nano covers all my needs and then some.
|
| And while you should absolutely not switch vim to nano if you
| enjoy vim, I would totally encourage you to play around with
| nano a bit more. You may be positively surprised at what you
| find.
| sedeki wrote:
| Just to be clear: are you coding in nano all the time in that
| 24/7 terminal session? But there is no syntax highlightning
| etc? To edit config files, sure. But most of the time spent?
|
| I prefer nano too; trying to learn vim. But my coding happens
| in either Qt Creator or VS Code.
| skneko wrote:
| Nano has syntax highlighting...
| sedeki wrote:
| You're right, sorry.
| qtoxic wrote:
| How does this have anything to do with Nano 5.7?
| apocolyps6 wrote:
| 1 critical comment about nano, 3 top level comments defending
| nano from the evil vim users. (at time of reading)
| bidirectional wrote:
| As is the way with these things. No one feels insecure about
| vim, not sure the same can be said of nano.
| dqx wrote:
| 0 discussion of any new features in Nano-5.7 (the topic of the
| post)
| earthboundkid wrote:
| CMD-F "micro" returned nothing, so here is a link to a modern
| nano replacement: https://micro-editor.github.io
| stinkytaco wrote:
| I'm curious what the intended audience for micro is? It seems
| like if you want extensibility you use vi or emacs. If you want
| a very quick and dirty program where you use the same 4 or 5
| commands every time you open it, you use nano since it's
| already installed. I don't know a lot of people in the middle,
| personally, so I'm curious what people who are using micro like
| about it in particular.
| account4mypc wrote:
| micro has two really nice features
|
| - mouse select
|
| - same keyboard shortcuts as vscode
|
| other than that it's the same as nano
| pierrec wrote:
| I used it when my laptop died and I decided to do continue
| working on my project using termux on my (low end)
| smartphone. It played well with the touchscreen and made a
| nice temporary environment. Basic and almost zero learning
| curve, but extensible and customizable when I wanted it.
| tpoacher wrote:
| I tried micro last time it was mentioned in a nano thread.
|
| I really wanted to like it, and was actually excited to try it
| in principle, but in practice I tried hard to get into it for 3
| days, and then got bored and reverted to nano.
|
| Also, 'modern nano replacement' implies that nano is somehow
| antiquated. Not the case. (unless you're thinking of nano 2.9
| which is what many linuxes unfortunately ship with by default
| instead of the latest shiny one ... no idea why).
|
| It sounds the same to me as if you'd said that the pinephone is
| a modern Android replacement.
| BooneJS wrote:
| Nano was my gateway editor when learning *nix in college. I tried
| vi only to have to close the window to exit. I think nano can
| continue to safely bring in converts from Windows and MacOS.
| philliphaydon wrote:
| I LOVE Nano. I just can't figure out vi/vim.
| nindalf wrote:
| I think vim has a pretty good tutorial within it. If you ever
| give it another chance, try that tutorial.
| tpoacher wrote:
| Nano also has a pretty good tutorial within it. It's called
| "look at the bottom of the window".
| mobilio wrote:
| Me too!
|
| Everything i know about vi/vim is :q and :q!
| hknapp wrote:
| https://danielmiessler.com/study/vim/
|
| it will probably take 4+ days to become faster editing text
| with vim than nano, and then you likely won't look back. Come
| back to the guide with decreasing frequency to add more
| knowledge to your vim arsenal.
| totetsu wrote:
| Nano has the best anime avatar https://youtu.be/k5HYzIw60iI
| tomcam wrote:
| That is one of my favorite shows ever
| valera_rozuvan wrote:
| I don't understand the people who dislike nano as an editor for
| the *nix system. After spending in it for like 30 minutes - it
| becomes an indispensable tool for quickly touching up text files
| anywhere you go to! No matter where I SSH to (*nix systems) - I
| always had nano available.
| fouric wrote:
| Emacs has had TRAMP[1] (transparently allows you to edit remote
| files in your local editor using an SSH client) for literally
| decades now, while SSHFS has been around for nearly as long,
| and even zeitgeist tools like Visual Studio Code have
| equivalent TRAMP-like/auto-SSH addons.
|
| The "it's not available on remote machines" line of reasoning
| hasn't been valid for at least 20 years (age of TRAMP), except
| for the case where you cannot SSH and have to physically sit at
| different consoles.
|
| [1] https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TrampMode
| kstrauser wrote:
| I love Emacs. I love Tramp. I love iTerm + Fish Shell more
| than eterm, though, so if I'm SSHing into a server it's from
| a terminal app outside of Emacs. In that situation, I'd
| rather use vim to make a quick tweak on a file than bounce to
| Emacs, tramp into the same machine I'm already in, and edit
| it that way.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Also, the OS that the editor is running on probably supports
| mounting a remote filesystem via NFS or SMB.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Nano has/had some surprising defaults. Way back when, I was
| using nano to edit some file or another in /etc. When I wrote
| it out, it "helpfully" justified all the lines by inserting
| newlines to make them fit in 80 columns. My mentor looked at me
| disapprovingly, uninstalled nano, pointed me at `man vim`, and
| said "you're using this now. Thank me later."
|
| Thank you, mentor.
|
| I don't know if nano still has that as a default on any system
| that's shipped in the last 20 years, but I always give it the
| side-eye whenever a system has `EDITOR=nano` set and I run
| something like `visudo`. Am I about to break the entire system?
| _Probably_ not, but to be sure I exit nano, configure
| `EDITOR=vim`, and try again. I _know_ vim won 't trick me like
| that.
| edflsafoiewq wrote:
| That was fixed in 2019. Apparently the default hardwrapping
| was inherited from pico, which was for composing email.
|
| https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/index.php?55067
| tpoacher wrote:
| Switching to vim because you don't want to press ^L (or set
| the respective configuration option in .nanorc) to toggle off
| hardwrapping is a bit overkill though ...
|
| It's not like "out of the box" vim is different in this
| regard. Half the time spent by a typical vim user with vim is
| coming up with personalised configurations.
|
| Surely if I said I'm ditching vim for nano because I wanted
| columns hardwrapped at 80 characters by default you'd look at
| me funny, right? xD
| kstrauser wrote:
| It was more along the lines of "look, you've outgrown this
| tool, and it's time for you to move onto something more
| appropriate to the work you're doing". I'm not going to
| criticize anyone for using nano to edit the random file
| here or there (so long as using it doesn't break the file).
| But honestly, you reach the limits of nano's abilities
| fairly quickly. As fine as it is for a quick change to a
| file, Vim and Emacs other programming editors are popular
| for a reason. I surely wouldn't want to use it to work on
| large projects with lots of files.
| Sunspark wrote:
| Nano is now the default editor on Fedora since v33.
|
| It makes sense. Modal editors have steep learning curves and
| were designed for an era of non-GUI interfaces running over
| teletypes. Everyone today knows how to use arrow keys to move
| around. Being dumped into vi, how many people will know how
| to go into the various modes to navigate and edit things?
|
| I run OpenWRT on my router, nano is one of the first packages
| I install on it.
| iheredia wrote:
| I pretty much agree and share the love for Nano, but - just as
| a comment - it happened to me that it wasn't available in some
| Red Hat servers. Depending on your regular work and the type of
| servers you SSH into, you could expect Nano to be already
| installed or not
| easton wrote:
| That's actually the entire reason I learned enough vim to be
| dangerous, on EL7 and below they did not ship nano in the box
| and there was a project I was working on where we had a bunch
| of 5.5 systems that had busted network configs. That was a..
| joy, to say the least.
| siver_john wrote:
| Ditto, on a fresh Arch Linux install I was using once.
| TechniKris wrote:
| > No matter where I SSH to (*nix systems) Nano is also
| available on Windows! I have it installed through Scoop and I
| use it when I SSH to my Windows PC from Termux on Android
| mrweasel wrote:
| I had a co-worker, whom I miss every time Nano comes up. He
| strongly preferred Nano, but not in an annoying way. He'd go
| through all our documentation and change 'vi' to 'nano', just
| because he could. He reasoned that anyone could use Nano if
| required, but vi could get a little weird at times.
| simion314 wrote:
| Probably the elitist guys, the ones that have their identity
| defined by the editor they use, the language and framework and
| the Linux distro/DE/OS they use.
|
| Many people just need a tool that does a simple job but does it
| well, like editing a ini file and adding a line or a word, nano
| is great for that. (we all know that type of guy that has to
| tell everyone all the time that he uses Arch and Rust would
| have fixed everything)
| [deleted]
| cesarb wrote:
| > like editing a ini file and adding a line or a word,
|
| That's precisely the use case that has made me remove nano
| from every machine I administer since the 90s.
|
| Unless you're really careful to always start nano as "nano
| -w", its hard word wrapping will introduce line breaks where
| many configuration file formats (including ini files) don't
| expect, and it will do so in lines other than the one you're
| modifying. It's less risky to simply set another editor as
| the default. (But if you're careful to always use "nano -w",
| it's a perfectly fine editor.)
| awild wrote:
| you could've also just set-up an /etc/nanorc file with the
| appropriate flag set.
|
| Also I've literally never encountered this behaviour even
| when copy-pasting code between two machines in my humble 10
| years of using nano.
| kijin wrote:
| I've never seen nano on any popular Linux distro hard-wrap
| long lines by default. Yes, it's controlled by a setting,
| and some people turn it on for some reason, but I just
| confirmed it's off by default (no need for any command-line
| flag) in both CentOS and Ubuntu. You might have been burned
| by a setting left behind by someone with a weird taste.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| I learned to always, _always_ use -w back around y2k,
| when my buddy taught me Gentoo. IIRC he had gotten his
| firewall config messed up at some point, or similar, due
| to forgetting that.
|
| These days I'm still too scared of accidentally messing
| something up due to not passing -w, so I just do it. It's
| in my muscle memory after all so doesn't take much
| effort.
| GordonS wrote:
| I've installed nano on every Linux system I've ever worked on,
| if it wasn't already there of course. For me, it's so much
| easier to work with than vim, for changing config files etc.
|
| I only wish line numbers were enabled by default, or at least
| there was a simple and easily discoverable way to enable them.
| bombcar wrote:
| echo "set linenumbers" > ~/.nanorc
| GordonS wrote:
| Huh, I seem to remember it being more arcane than that, but
| in truth it's been a few years since I bothered trying.
|
| Anyway, thanks - this looks easy to remember!
| cicero wrote:
| I've always thought of nano as simplistic, but reading the
| discussion here, I see there is more to it than I thought.
|
| I learned vi (precursor of vim) in the 1980s and the commands
| became second nature to me. However, as window-based systems and
| applications became the norm, I found it difficult to switch
| between vim and Windows or Mac applications, including the web. A
| good example of my problem involves the use of the escape key in
| vim to switch out of text entry mode, but many other apps use
| escape to cancel an action. I got tired of typing a paragraph,
| hitting escape, and then having to retype the paragraph because I
| had cancelled my input.
|
| Nevertheless, it's great to have an editor I can easily invoke
| from the Linux command-line, so I still use vim for that.
| However, I will consider moving to nano for that purpose. At my
| age, I may never know it as well as the vi/vim I learned in my
| younger days, but it should still be useful.
| k__ wrote:
| I'm so glad that Nano and Pico exist.
|
| These are the only terminal editors I really understand.
| minimaul wrote:
| nano is great as a quick command line config editor. I wouldn't
| use it for a big task, but it's wonderful to just dive into, make
| a quick change, and get on with whatever you were doing.
|
| Has syntax highlighting support too, so you can have your config
| file nicely highlighted to make editing easier :)
|
| There's nothing wrong with vi/vim or emacs either, but nano has
| got to be the most accessible command line editor out there.
| 293984j29384 wrote:
| I never understood the hate Nano gets from vi users. Nano does
| many things quicker and easier than vi. For example, search &
| replace. Would I code in Nano? No. Do I use Nano to edit
| configuration files and make other small edits? Absolutely.
| chapium wrote:
| I can't be bothered by a tool I don't use.
| bidirectional wrote:
| The problem is that every time vim is mentioned, there are
| dozens of comments about how nano is a better alternative,
| which is completely missing the point. Most vim users are using
| it all day as their main editor for various purposes, and most
| nano users are using it as a quick tool for small edits.
| They're largely incomparable.
| PedroBatista wrote:
| That's the same as a IntelliJ hating on Notepad.exe, it's
| ridiculous.
|
| For what Nano is mostly used for, Nano has won.
| aflag wrote:
| I'm intrigued. How do you search and replace in nano and how
| can it be better than `:%s/<regex>/<replacement>/gc`? I thought
| search and replacement was one of the killer features of vim.
| bear8642 wrote:
| Search replace in nano via "Where is" (^W), "Replace" (^R),
| "Regexp"(M-R).
| edoceo wrote:
| I can't remember how but nano has the bottom two lines
| showing common actions and their key-commands, so the answer
| is on screen.
| aflag wrote:
| Nano is definitely more friendly for the untrained user,
| but I thought they were saying it was better for a user
| that is well versed in both.
| tpoacher wrote:
| In nano the equivalent command (as keystrokes) would be: '^\'
| (or 'M-R') to enter 'replace' mode <search term> (M-R to
| toggle 'regex' mode on off) <replacement> 'A' to 'replace
| all' (or you can replace interactively)
|
| And if you really want to shave off the extra 2 keystrokes
| for the 'M-R' toggle and 'A' option, you can always create a
| new macro in your config file that does just that.
| mettamage wrote:
| IMO both vim and nano are perfectly fine tools. IMO the
| emotional gripes that people have with them are really more
| preferences in a world where everything is already near
| perfect.
|
| Or maybe that's just me. Nano, vim, it's all good, but for the
| past 3 years I strongly prefer vim :P (before that I prefered
| nano because I couldn't find a good vim tutorial)
| bsharitt wrote:
| >Nano does many things quicker and easier than vi. For example,
| search & replace.
|
| There may be instances where Nano does something quicker but
| search and replace would seem to be a perfect example of the
| opposite where Nano has taken a quick one line thing in vi and
| turned it into a multistep process for simplicity.
| kijin wrote:
| Exactly. And that can be extremely useful for people who
| either don't want to or can't memorize the vi one-liner.
|
| Nano is different from vi because it targets a different set
| of users. Many of them use the terminal infrequently, so you
| can't assume they'll ever build up the kind of muscle memory
| that makes vi so efficient. You can't even assume that
| they'll remember any commands, so the commands are displayed
| prominently at the bottom. There's a reason so many Ubuntu
| tutorials for beginners use nano instead of vi.
| ngcazz wrote:
| Don't mean to hate on Nano, but after all these years gaining
| inordinate vim muscle memory, an unexpected
| `VISUAL=/usr/bin/nano` default feels to me like a vim prompt
| must feel to a newbie.
| mettamage wrote:
| Not to me, currently a vim user and irritated by nano.
|
| Back in the day when vim would open it felt more as if my
| whole computer broke and nothing in the universe made sense
| anymore.
|
| Nowadays with nano, I simply feel and think: ugghhh soo SLOW!
|
| I wonder how other people experience it :P
| hajile wrote:
| I find nano a bit frustrating to arrow around in.
|
| Maybe someone could add vim binding support...
| tpoacher wrote:
| I'm genuinely interested what you mean by this. What kind
| of navigating functions do you miss from vim when in
| nano? I'm almost 99% sure that they already exist (and if
| not, are perfectly scriptable to make).
| minikites wrote:
| >I never understood the hate Nano gets from vi users.
|
| They need to justify all the time they spent learning and
| configuring vi/vim to themselves and to others.
| mettamage wrote:
| Not really, I don't configure vim and all my skills w.r.t.
| vim are via vimtutor.
|
| Cost of learning: 1 hour (when I was bored on a long train
| ride and didn't have access to internet). I did the tutorial
| 3 times.
|
| The basics of vim are easy to learn. Caveat: I do remember I
| had like 5 false starts in learning vim (and remembering
| nothing). This was before I knew vimtutor and googled for
| random tutorials. IMO, a lot of vim tutorials make out the
| vim basics to be much more complicated than they are.
| Vimtutor doesn't, vimtutor is the perfect example of a magic
| bullet.
|
| Just type vimtutor in the CLI and go.
| apocolyps6 wrote:
| > All those C programmers hating on python are probably just
| bitter they had to waste all that time learning pointers.
| baseballdork wrote:
| That's pretty dismissive. I used nano early on and moved to
| vim and loved it. I think other people might have a similar
| experience as me so I encourage them to try vim or emacs if
| they're up for it. I'm not trying to justify my time in vim,
| I'm trying to encourage people to see if they might
| appreciate the tool as much as I do.
| minikites wrote:
| It doesn't sound like you hate nano though, so my comment
| doesn't apply to you or people like you.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| Linus Torvalds recently did an interview and I was suprised to
| read that he was considering switching from his micro-emacs
| setup to Nano. If it's Linus approved, how can I say something
| is bad? ;)
| unixhero wrote:
| Did you read the whole interview? He repeats the same
| statements, well basically because he was Asker the same
| stuff as always. Now his statements are zen level pragmatic.
| He doesn't want to get into a new editor that gets in his
| way.
|
| I admit it is kind of underwhelming to read his answers. I am
| always hoping for some tidbits where he can state that he has
| seen the way. But for the most part it just pure hard work
| and true expertise of the systems programming domain. I guess
| the thing is evidence that true innovation often is rigorous
| and dry engineering.
|
| So, nano, why not. I for one use jed. I also finally learnt
| how to exit vim.
| circularfoyers wrote:
| Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this is the interview
| you are referring to
| https://www.tag1consulting.com/blog/interview-linus-
| torvalds... in case anyone was curious like I was.
| patrec wrote:
| > I never understood the hate Nano gets from vi users.
|
| The reason I hate nano was that it's been forced upon me for in
| my view entirely misguided attempt to make the commandline more
| approachable. So that now instead of any competent unix person
| needing to have at least minimal skills with two arcane (but
| powerful) editors (vi - for editing, and emacs for shell
| keybindings at least), you now also need minimal skills with an
| essentially equally arcane but not at all powerful or, useful
| editor (once you have basic competence with either emacs or vi
| at least).
|
| Wouldn't it have been much better to have provided a friendlier
| vi(m) config by default, given that this was already the
| default editor on any unix system before nano came along and
| there is actually some fair amount of benefit in learning it,
| because it's a powerful and widely supported set of keybindings
| (emacs and every major IDE have good vim emulation these days)?
| ravi-delia wrote:
| Who is forcing nano on you? Why do they get to tell you what
| text editor to use? Blink twice if someone is holding you
| hostage at your computer, no one deserves a life of nano use.
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| Both the GuixSD and NixOS default system packages have nano
| and not vi. If you realize that you want vi, then you have
| to get it networked and change the configuration, all using
| nano, in order to install it.
| patrec wrote:
| If you have an IT career and ever advance far enough in it,
| chances are pretty good that you will eventually need to
| log into various types of servers, vms, container images
| that you either have no administrative control over or
| where this administrative control is not best used to
| switch around standard editor choices to suit your personal
| convenience.
| qalmakka wrote:
| Nano, it's been so long since the last time I have used it. I
| have so many fond memories of opening it to edit configuration
| fileson bare TTYs while installing Gentoo or Archlinux in the mid
| '00s. A few years later I switched to (N)Vi(m) (with quite a long
| Emacs parenthesis), but `nano` still has a special place in my
| heart as my first real experience with a CLI editor (if you
| exclude MSDOS' EDIT, of course).
| hidden_sheepman wrote:
| Nano, is great, very light weight, and easy to compile from
| source. Usually available on pretty much any unix system.
|
| I love the fact that it doesn't try to do anything more than edit
| text.
| dang wrote:
| Some past threads - hard to pick out from other nanos -
|
| _An Atonement of Nano_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26063301 - Feb 2021 (100
| comments)
|
| _Nano 5.0_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23995909 -
| July 2020 (195 comments)
|
| _Fedora Approves of Making Nano the Default Terminal Text
| Editor_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23818199 - July
| 2020 (95 comments)
|
| _Fedora Devs Looking to Change Default Editor from Vi to Nano_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21566828 - Nov 2019 (34
| comments)
|
| _GNU Nano 4.0_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19476526 -
| March 2019 (147 comments)
|
| _GNU nano 3.0 released_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17946145 - Sept 2018 (43
| comments)
|
| _GNU nano 2.9.0_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15731079
| - Nov 2017 (59 comments)
|
| _Nano to remain in GNU_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12420683 - Sept 2016 (65
| comments)
|
| _What's up with nano?_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11958728 - June 2016 (79
| comments)
|
| _Nano is no longer a GNU project_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11953044 - June 2016 (229
| comments)
| canada2us wrote:
| Don't give hate a chance, guys. Just ask people to use `editor`
| to edit text files, it will open the default editor on their OS
| (at least Debian).
|
| Our goal is to ask others to edit some text files, not to ask
| them to use what tool to edit those files.
|
| Cheers.
| CivBase wrote:
| Ed is the standard text editor.
| ShakataGaNai wrote:
| Thank you Nano devs. I love it and continue to love it all these
| years later.
|
| I'm happy to get in the middle of any vi vs emacs fight with the
| battle cry of "Nano for life!". The looks on their face is always
| priceless.
| tpoacher wrote:
| +1. Especially when they realise you're being serious. \o/
| haolez wrote:
| Even nano can become a powerful programming editor if combined
| with fzf[0]. You can quickly navigate to files, tags and language
| server stuff and then open your files directly into the line of
| interest. It's a nice exercise for someone willing to get a feel
| of the Unix way (I'm not advocating it as your daily driver,
| though).
|
| [0] https://github.com/junegunn/fzf
| nige123 wrote:
| Love nano. Many of the keybindings work in bash too.
|
| Check out:
|
| https://www.nano-editor.org/dist/latest/cheatsheet.html
| ashton314 wrote:
| All those key bindings came from Emacs originally
| an_mp_speaks wrote:
| A delightfully opaque version name, as ever. Does anyone know
| what it's referencing?
| fullstop wrote:
| It's a clone / inspired by the editor in Pine, pico, the PIne
| COmposer. Ages ago, Pine was fairly standard for text-based
| email on Unix.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_(email_client)
|
| The name is a play on metric prefixes.
| GiorgioG wrote:
| I learned Pico in college (part of our email system IIRC.) I
| don't code in terminal windows (prefer IDEs) and I can get by in
| vim. Inevitably I reach for nano when I'm editing config files.
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