Linux edit file without editor

How to open, create, edit, and view a file in Linux

One thing GNU/Linux does as well as any other operating system is give you the tools you need to create and edit text files. Ask ten Linux users to name their favorite text editor, and you might get ten different answers. On this page, we cover a few of the many text editors available for Linux.

GUI text editors

This section discusses text editing applications for the Linux windowing system, X Windows, more commonly known as X11 or X.

If you are coming from Microsoft Windows, you are no doubt familiar with the classic Windows text editor, Notepad. Linux offers many similar programs, including NEdit, gedit, and geany. Each of these programs are free software, and they each provide roughly the same functionality. It’s up to you to decide which one feels best and has the best interface for you. All three of these programs support syntax highlighting, which helps with editing source code or documents written in a markup language such as HTML or CSS.

NEdit

NEdit, which is short for the Nirvana Editor, is a straightforward text editor that is very similar to Notepad. It uses a Motif-style interface.

The NEdit homepage is located at https://sourceforge.net/projects/nedit/. If you are on a Debian or Ubuntu system, you can install NEdit with the following command:

For more information, see our NEdit information page.

Geany

Geany is a text editor that is a lot like Notepad++ for Windows. It provides a tabbed interface for working with multiple open files at once and has nifty features like displaying line numbers in the margin. It uses the GTK+ interface toolkit.

The Geany homepage is located at http://www.geany.org/. On Debian and Ubuntu systems, you can install Geany by running the command:

Gedit

Gedit is the default text editor of the GNOME desktop environment. It’s a great, text editor that can be used on about any Linux system.

The Gedit homepage is located at https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Gedit. On Debian and Ubuntu systems, Gedit can be installed by running the following command:

Terminal-based text editors

If you are working from the Linux command line interface and you need a text editor, you have many options. Here are some of the most popular:

pico started out as the editor built into the text-based e-mail program pine, and it was eventually packaged as a stand-alone program for editing text files. («pico» is a scientific prefix for very small things.)

The modern version of pine is called alpine, but pico is still called pico. You can find more information about how to use it in our pico command documentation.

On Debian and Ubuntu Linux systems, you can install pico using the command:

nano is the GNU version of pico and is essentially the same program under a different name.

On Debian and Ubuntu Linux systems, nano can be installed with the command:

vim, which stands for «vi improved,» is a text editor used by millions of computing professionals all over the world. Its controls are a little confusing at first, but once you get the hang of them, vim makes executing complex editing tasks fast and easy. For more information, see our in-depth vim guide.

On Debian and Ubuntu Linux systems, vim can be installed using the command:

emacs

emacs is a complex, highly customizable text editor with a built-in interpreter for the Lisp programming language. It is used religiously by some computer programmers, especially those who write computer programs in Lisp dialects such as Scheme. For more information, see our emacs information page.

On Debian and Ubuntu Linux systems, emacs can be installed using the command:

Redirecting command output into a text file

When at the Linux command line, you sometimes want to create or make changes to a text file without actually running a text editor. Here are some commands you might find useful.

Creating an empty file with the touch command

To create an empty file, it’s common to use the command touch. The touch command updates the atime and mtime attributes of a file as if the contents of the file had been changed — without actually changing anything. If you touch a file that doesn’t exist, the system creates the file without putting any data inside.

For instance, the command:

The above command creates a new, empty file called myfile.txt if that file does not already exist.

Redirecting text into a file

Sometimes you need to stick the output of a command into a file. To accomplish this quickly and easily, you can use the > symbol to redirect the output to a file.

For instance, the echo command is used to «echo» text as output. By default, this goes to the standard output — the screen. So the command:

The above command prints that text on your screen and return you to the command prompt. However, you can use > to redirect this output to a file. For instance:

The above command puts the text «Example text» into the file myfile.txt. If myfile.txt does not exist, it is created. If it already exists, its contents will be overwritten, destroying the previous contents and replacing them.

Be careful when redirecting output to a file using >. It will overwrite the previous contents of the file if it already exists. There is no undo for this operation, so make sure you want to completely replace the file’s contents before you run the command.

Here’s an example using another command:

The above command executes ls with the -l option, which gives a detailed list of files in the current directory. The > operator redirects the output to the file directory.txt, instead of printing it to the screen. If directory.txt does not exist, it is created first. If it already exists, its contents will be replaced.

Redirecting to the end of a file

The redirect operator >> is similar to >, but instead of overwriting the file contents, it appends the new data to the end of the file. For instance, the command:

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6 Commands to Edit File With and Without vi, vim Linux Editor

You might be knowing opening and editing file in vi/vim editor in Linux system. Do you wonder- how you can edit file without vi or vim editor?

Many times you have to create a file, write the content on your Unix-line or Linux systems. Sometimes you require to write a program and run it. For all this, you need a text editor to read and write in the file.

So let’s see different commands for creating and editing the files even if you don’t have vi or vim editor, one-by-one…

Table of Contents

File handling using vi and vim editor

The vi and vim are two widely used command line editors on the Unix-like systems (including Linux). And many of the users know about vi and vim editor.

Following are the simple commands you can use to create the file and edit it.

1. Using vi editor

There are two modes of opening file in vi editors. One is command mode and other is insert mode. As it’s not the part of this discussion. And it’s a big topic to discuss in full fledge. We will describe it in the upcoming article.

2. Using vim editor

What if you don’t have vi or vim editor installed on your system?

How to Edit File without vi/vim Editor in Linux?

You can use cat or touch command.

3. Using cat as a text editor

Using cat command to create file

Write the content and once it is done press ctrl+D.

It will save the contents to the file.

Note: Every time when you run this command, it will erase all the contents and write newly entered content. So, be careful if you have any important data in your file.

If you want to edit a file using cat, try the following the command

4. Using touch command

You can also create the file using touch command.

5. using ssh and scp commands

If you are working on the Linux server, you can see there are limited packages installed on the server. There may be a restriction of using resources and so installed packages.

If none of the commands work, follow the steps give below.

• Login into Linux server using ssh command.
• Download the file on the local machine from server.
• Update the file on the local machine.
• Copy the file back to the server. You can use the scp command (Secure Copy Paste command) to copy a file from the local machine to the server.

You can use the simple scp command to copy the file from server to your local system.

6. Using other Programming Language

If you have scripting or any other programming language installed on your system, you can use that to create and edit the file. For example…

It is pretty easy to edit the file using vi and vim editor. But sometimes you may need to edit the file without vi and vim editor. Hope these commands will help you to edit file if there is no vi, vim.

Other vi/vim editor’s commands f0r enhancing your Linux experience:

If you have any doubt or if you have any another alternative to edit file without vi/vim editor, feel free to write in a comment below.

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How to edit a text file without a text editor?

I found myself in a situation, where I needed to connect to a remote machine there were no text editors installed (no vi or nano).

The only way to edit text files is to use echo and cat.

Can you please share your experience, of how would you edit text files in such a situation? Perhaps there is a way to pipe a file to local vim.

Update: To clarify, the question is more just a theoretical case. A couple of times I had to debug pods in a k8 cluster with very minimal setup. So you may need to update some configs.

4 Answers 4

In that instance, I’d try transferring files out and editing them on another computer, then transfer them back. If you have ssh , you should have scp (I hope), so you should be able to push files in and out. If not, you can also look for ftp to transfer files in and out.

If not, then I think your best option is to try and make use of cat , grep , sed , echo , and I/O redirection (especially append with >> ). And lots of temporary files.

If zsh is installed, you can edit the files with the zsh line editor with:

As faxeyo mentioned, the easiest way to edit the file is to edit it remotely. Vim on your local machine often is able to edit files over SFTP, and if you use some other editor, it may be able to work remotely as well.

However, maybe you’re editing a file that can only be modified as some other user and that won’t work. If the remote system is a Linux system, it may have busybox on it, and some versions of busybox include vi and ed . The vi will not be fully featured, but it will be functional enough to edit files. You can invoke these with busybox vi FILE or busybox ed file . You may be able to scp over a statically linked busybox binary as well.

Your system may have a somewhat more functional ed binary elsewhere. It’s a line editor much like the colon commands of vi (the ex commands). While optional on many Linux distros, it’s often used for some of the more esoteric features of patch , so it may be present. ed and the ex mode of vi also have the pleasant feature of working without a TTY.

Some very old Debian systems have ae , which can run in vi mode. Every other non-Linux open source operating system I’m aware of has one of vi , ex , or ed in the base system and don’t permit them to be removed via their package manager.

If there really are no text editors, I’d write chunks of data with cat and heredocs into temporary files and edit mistakes with sed . I’d also send a nice email to the sysadmin (from another system, of course), asking if they could kindly install an editor or two.

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How to edit a text file in my terminal

I’m using Linux mint and using the vi command to create text files, now that I created a text file and saved it. How do I get back into to edit the text file again?

6 Answers 6

Try this command:

it, will open up a text editor to edit your file.

OR

Here, you can edit your file in the terminal window.

Open the file again using vi. and then press the insert button to begin editing it.

Open the file again using vi. and then press » i » or press insert key ,

For save and quit

and write the following command

without save and quit

If you are still inside the vi editor, you might be in a different mode from the one you want. Hit ESC a couple of times (until it rings or flashes) and then «i» to enter INSERT mode or «a» to enter APPEND mode (they are the same, just start before or after current character).

If you are back at the command prompt, make sure you can locate the file, then navigate to that directory and perform the mentioned «vi helloWorld.txt». Once you are in the editor, you’ll need to check the vi reference to know how to perform the editions you want (you may want to google «vi reference» or «vi cheat sheet»).

Once the edition is done, hit ESC again, then type :wq to save your work or :q! to quit without saving.

For quick reference, here you have a text-based cheat sheet.

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How to edit files in a terminal with nano?

Sometimes, a graphical text editor like gedit or kate cannot be used (because you’re in a virtual console for example). Luckily, there are text editors for the terminal. An easy one is nano , but I cannot understand how to work with it.

If I start nano by running nano , the bottom text is supposed to help me but all I see are things like ^G Get Help ^O WriteOut .

1. How can I open text files for editing?
2. How can I save the file?
3. How can I quit the editor without saving the changes?
4. How to edit? I heard that you’ve to enter some commands to begin editing in vi , is this true for nano too?
5. Sometimes, if I manage to open a file, the text is unreadable due to its colors. How can I disable these colors? (see the image below)
6. In the some files, lines are truncated because those do not fit in the screen. How can I prevent that from happening? (see the image below)

4 Answers 4

Ctrl + G will let you read the help. nano can do some pretty nice things so you might want to pootle around in there for a bit.

When you see ^G (et al) it means Ctrl + G . In the help pages, M-H means Alt + H .

How can I open text files for editing?

This is the default in nano . Open and file and you’re set to start editing:

Note: you won’t be able to save unless you have write permissions for that file.

How can I save the file?

F3 will let you save without exiting. Otherwise, Ctrl + X will prompt you if you’ve made changes. Press Y when it asks, and Enter to confirm the filename.

How can I quit the editor without saving the changes?

Ctrl + X , then N when it asks if you want to save.

How to edit? I heard that you’ve to enter some commands to begin editing in vi, is this true for nano too?

As above, no. nano is simple. It drops you in edit mode as soon as it opens. You can use arrow keys, Page Up / Page Down and Home / End as in gedit. You cannot use the mouse for moving the cursor position.

Sometimes, if I manage to open a file, the text is unreadable due to its colors. How can I disable these colors?

Colours are loaded through the nanorc framework. These are files that are loaded when nano loads which basically spell out the syntax highlighting. To toggle syntax highlighting, press Alt + Y . To disable it permanently for certain file types, edit /etc/nanorc and put a hash mark ( # ) before include «/usr/share/nano/*.nanorc» .

In the some files, lines are truncated because those do not fit in the screen. How can I prevent that from happening?

Well I’ve been trying to find something but the best I could see was enabling soft-line-wrap with the funky key-combination of: Alt + $ ( Alt + Shift + 4 ). To enable soft line wrapping by default, add the below line to

More information about this configuration file can be found at man nanorc .

In the bottom text the ^ stands for Ctrl and M- stands for Alt

So ^G is Ctrl-G and M-Y is Alt-Y (that one toggles the colors).

You can toggle line truncation with M-$ . See the help pages ( ^G ) for more functions.

The combination of ^ and a letter means you’re supposed to press Ctrl and that letter. So when nano says ^X Exit that means you’re gonna quit nano by pressing Ctrl + X .

To open a file called /etc/nanorc you can start nano with:

Note that /etc/groups is not writeable by regular users, therefore you need sudo :

If you’ve already opened nano , you can press Ctrl + R to open a file.

On exit ( Ctrl + X ) nano will ask you whether to save the file. You can save it manually with F3 .

Answer n for no in the Ctrl + X dialogue.

Basic editing is done by using the arrow keys to navigate and typing. Plain and simple.

Syntax highlighting is disabled in a hidden file called .nanorc in your home directory along with other options. Alt + Y toggles it.

In the aforementioned .nanorc you can add the line set fill 80 which will break long lines at 80 characters length. Alt + M toggles it.

Here is a list of stettings you can configure in .nanorc .

/.nanorc and /etc/nanorc . I’ve 2.2.6-1 installed (Natty) and a QWERTY keyboard layout.

Ctrl X : Exit the editor. If you’ve edited text without saving, you’ll be prompted as to whether you really want to exit.

Ctrl O : Write (output) the current contents of the text buffer to a file. A filename prompt will appear; press Ctrl T to open the file navigator shown above.

Ctrl R : Read a text file into the current editing session. At the filename prompt, hit Ctrl T for the file navigator.

Ctrl K : Cut a line into the clipboard. You can press this repeatedly to copy multiple lines, which are then stored as one chunk.

Ctrl J : Justify (fill out) a paragraph of text. By default, this reflows text to match the width of the editing window.

Ctrl U : Uncut text, or rather, paste it from the clipboard. Note that after a Justify operation, this turns into unjustify.

Ctrl T : Check spelling.

Ctrl W : Find a word or phrase. At the prompt, use the cursor keys to go through previous search terms, or hit Ctrl R to move into replace mode. Alternatively you can hit Ctrl T to go to a specific line.

Ctrl C : Show current line number and file information.

Ctrl G : Get help; this provides information on navigating through files and common keyboard commands.

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