The GNU nano text editor

3.1 Screen Layout

The default screen of nano consists of four areas. From top to bottom these are: the title bar, the edit window, the status bar, and two help lines.

The title bar consists of three sections: left, center and right. The section on the left displays the version of nano being used. The center section displays the current filename, or "New Buffer" if the file has not yet been named. The section on the right displays "Modified" if the file has been modified since it was last saved or opened.

The status bar is the third line from the bottom of the screen. It shows important and informational messages. Any error messages that occur from using the editor appear on the status bar. Any questions that are asked of the user are asked on the status bar, and any user input (search strings, filenames, etc.) is input on the status bar.

The two help lines at the bottom of the screen show some of the most essential functions of the editor.

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3.2 Entering Text

nano is a "modeless" editor. This means that all keystrokes, with the exception of Control and Meta sequences, enter text into the file being edited.

Characters not present on the keyboard can be entered in two ways:

• For characters with a single-byte code, pressing the Esc key twice and then typing a three-digit decimal number (from 000 to 255) makes nano behave as if you typed the key with that value.
• For any possible character, pressing M-V (Alt+V) and then typing a series of hexadecimal digits (at most six, or concluded with Enter or Space) enters the corresponding Unicode character into the buffer.

For example, typing Esc Esc 2 3 4 enters the character "ê" — useful when writing about a French party. Typing M-V 0 0 2 2 c 4 enters the symbol "⋄", a little diamond.

Typing M-V followed by anything other than a hexadecimal digit enters this keystroke verbatim into the buffer, allowing the user to insert literal control codes (except ^J) or escape sequences.

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3.3 Commands

Commands are given by using the Control key (Ctrl, shown as ^) or the Meta key (Alt or Cmd, shown as M-).

• A control-key sequence is entered by holding down the Ctrl key and pressing the desired key.
• A meta-key sequence is entered by holding down the Meta key (normally the Alt key) and pressing the desired key.

If for some reason on your system the combinations with Ctrl or Alt do not work, you can generate them by using the Esc key. A control-key sequence is generated by pressing the Esc key twice and then pressing the desired key, and a meta-key sequence by pressing the Esc key once and then pressing the desired key.

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3.4 The Cutbuffer

Text can be cut from a file a whole line at a time with ^K. The cut line is stored in the cutbuffer. Consecutive strokes of ^K add each cut line to this buffer, but a ^K after any other keystroke overwrites the entire cutbuffer.

The contents of the cutbuffer can be pasted at the current cursor position with ^U.

A line of text can be copied into the cutbuffer (without cutting it) with M-6.

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3.5 The Mark

Text can be selected by first ’setting the Mark’ with ^6 or M-A and then moving the cursor to the other end of the portion to be selected. The selected portion of text is highlighted. This selection can now be cut or copied in its entirety with a single ^K or M-6. Or the selection can be used to limit the scope of a search-and-replace (^\) or spell-checking session (^T^T).

On some terminals, text can be selected also by holding down Shift while using the cursor keys. Holding down the Ctrl or Alt key too increases the stride. Such a selection is cancelled upon any cursor movement where Shift isn’t held.

Cutting or copying selected text toggles off the mark automatically. If needed, it can be toggled off manually with another ^6 or M-A.

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3.6 Search and Replace

With the Search command (^F or ^W) one can search the current buffer for the occurrence of any string. The default search mode is forward, case-insensitive, and for literal strings. But one can search backwards by toggling M-B, search case sensitively with M-C, and interpret regular expressions in the search string with M-R.

With the Replacement command (M-R or ^\) one can replace a given string (or regular expression) with another string. When a regular expression contains fragments between parentheses, the replacement string can refer back to these fragments via \1 to \9.

For each occurrence of the search string you are asked whether to replace it. You can choose Yes (replace it), or No (skip this one), or All (replace all remaining occurrences without asking any more), or Cancel (stop with replacing, but replacements that have already been made will not be undone).

If before a replacing session starts a region is marked, then only occurrences of the search string within the marked region will be replaced.

A regular expression always covers just one line — it cannot span multiple lines. And neither a search string nor a replacement string can contain a newline (LF).

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3.7 Using the Mouse

When mouse support has been configured and enabled, a single mouse click places the cursor at the indicated position. Clicking a second time in the same position toggles the mark. Clicking in the two help lines executes the selected shortcut. To be able to select text with the left button, or paste text with the middle button, hold down the Shift key during those actions.

The mouse works in the X Window System, and on the console when gpm is running.

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3.8 Anchors

With M-Ins you can place an anchor (a kind of temporary bookmark) at the current line. With M-PgUp and M-PgDn you can jump to an anchor in the backward/forward direction. This jumping wraps around at the top and bottom.

When a line with an anchor is removed, the line where the cursor ends up inherits the anchor. After performing an operation on the entire buffer (like formatting it, piping it through a command, or doing an external spell check on it), any anchors that were present are gone. And when you close the buffer, all its anchors simply disappear; they are not saved.

Anchors are visualized in the margin when line numbers are activated.

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3.9 Limitations

The recording and playback of keyboard macros works correctly only on a terminal emulator, not on a Linux console (VT), because the latter does not by default distinguish modified from unmodified arrow keys.

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8.1 Settings

The supported settings in a nanorc file are:

set afterends

Make Ctrl+Right and Ctrl+Delete stop at word ends instead of beginnings.

set allow_insecure_backup

When backing up files, allow the backup to succeed even if its permissions can’t be (re)set due to special OS considerations. You should NOT enable this option unless you are sure you need it.

set atblanks

When soft line wrapping is enabled, make it wrap lines at blank characters (tabs and spaces) instead of always at the edge of the screen.

set autoindent

Automatically indent a newly created line to the same number of tabs and/or spaces as the previous line (or as the next line if the previous line is the beginning of a paragraph).

set backup

When saving a file, back up the previous version of it, using the current filename suffixed with a tilde (~).

set backupdir "directory"

Make and keep not just one backup file, but make and keep a uniquely numbered one every time a file is saved — when backups are enabled with set backup or --backup or -B. The uniquely numbered files are stored in the specified directory.

set boldtext

Use bold instead of reverse video for the title bar, status bar, prompt bar, mini bar, key combos, line numbers, and selected text. This can be overridden by setting the options titlecolor, statuscolor, promptcolor, minicolor, keycolor, numbercolor, and/or selectedcolor.

set bookstyle

When justifying, treat any line that starts with whitespace as the beginning of a paragraph (unless auto-indenting is on).

set brackets "characters"

Set the characters treated as closing brackets when justifying paragraphs. This may not include blank characters. Only closing punctuation (see set punct), optionally followed by the specified closing brackets, can end sentences. The default value is ""')>]}".

set breaklonglines

Automatically hard-wrap the current line when it becomes overlong.

set casesensitive

Do case-sensitive searches by default.

set colonparsing

When a filename given on the command line ends in a colon plus digits and this filename does not exist, then snip the colon plus digits and understand the digits as a line number. If the trimmed filename does not exist either, then repeat the process and understand the obtained two numbers as line and column number. But if the doubly trimmed filename does not exist either, then forget the trimming and accept the original filename as is. To disable this colon parsing for some file, use +1 or similar before the relevant filename.

set constantshow

Constantly display the cursor position on the status bar. Note that this overrides quickblank.

set cutfromcursor

Use cut-from-cursor-to-end-of-line by default, instead of cutting the whole line.

set emptyline

Do not use the line below the title bar, leaving it entirely blank.

set errorcolor [bold,][italic,]fgcolor,bgcolor

Use this color combination for the status bar when an error message is displayed. The default value is bold,white,red. See set keycolor for valid color names.

set fill number

Set the target width for justifying and automatic hard-wrapping at this number of columns. If the value is 0 or less, wrapping occurs at the width of the screen minus number columns, allowing the wrap point to vary along with the width of the screen if the screen is resized. The default value is -8.

set functioncolor [bold,][italic,]fgcolor,bgcolor

Use this color combination for the concise function descriptions in the two help lines at the bottom of the screen. See set keycolor for valid color names.

set guidestripe number

Draw a vertical stripe at the given column, to help judge the width of the text. (The color of the stripe can be changed with set stripecolor.)

set historylog

Save the last hundred search strings and replacement strings and executed commands, so they can be easily reused in later sessions.

set indicator

Display a "scrollbar" on the righthand side of the edit window. It shows the position of the viewport in the buffer and how much of the buffer is covered by the viewport.

set jumpyscrolling

Scroll the buffer contents per half-screen instead of per line.

set keycolor [bold,][italic,]fgcolor,bgcolor

Use this color combination for the shortcut key combos in the two help lines at the bottom of the screen. Valid names for the foreground and background colors are: red, green, blue, magenta, yellow, cyan, white, and black. Each of these eight names may be prefixed with the word light to get a brighter version of that color. The word grey or gray may be used as a synonym for lightblack. On a Linux console, light does not have any effect for a background color.

On terminal emulators that can do at least 256 colors, other valid (but unprefixable) color names are: pink, purple, mauve, lagoon, mint, lime, peach, orange, latte, rosy, beet, plum, sea, sky, slate, teal, sage, brown, ocher, sand, tawny, brick, crimson, and normal — where normal means the default foreground or background color. On such emulators, the color may also be specified as a three-digit hexadecimal number prefixed with #, with the digits representing the amounts of red, green, and blue, respectively. This tells nano to select from the available palette the color that approximates the given values.

Either fgcolor or ,bgcolor may be left out, and the pair may be preceded by bold and/or italic (separated by commas) to get a bold and/or slanting typeface, if your terminal can do those.

set linenumbers

Display line numbers to the left of the text area. (Any line with an anchor additionally gets a mark in the margin.)

set locking

Enable vim-style lock-files for when editing files.

set magic

When neither the file’s name nor its first line give a clue, try using libmagic to determine the applicable syntax. (Calling libmagic can be relatively time consuming. It is therefore not done by default.)

set matchbrackets "characters"

Specify the opening and closing brackets that can be found by bracket searches. This may not include blank characters. The opening set must come before the closing set, and the two sets must be in the same order. The default value is "(<[{)>]}".

set minibar

Suppress the title bar and instead show information about the current buffer at the bottom of the screen, in the space for the status bar. In this "mini bar" the filename is shown on the left, followed by an asterisk if the buffer has been modified. On the right are displayed the current line and column number, the code of the character under the cursor (in Unicode format: U+xxxx), the same flags as are shown by set stateflags, and a percentage that expresses how far the cursor is into the file (linewise). When a file is loaded or saved, and also when switching between buffers, the number of lines in the buffer is displayed after the filename. This number is cleared upon the next keystroke, or replaced with an [i/n] counter when multiple buffers are open. The line plus column numbers and the character code are displayed only when set constantshow is used, and can be toggled on and off with M-C. The state flags are displayed only when set stateflags is used.

set minicolor [bold,][italic,]fgcolor,bgcolor

Use this color combination for the mini bar. (When this option is not specified, the colors of the title bar are used.) See set keycolor for valid color names.

set mouse

Enable mouse support, so that mouse clicks can be used to place the cursor, set the mark (with two clicks), or execute shortcuts.

set multibuffer

When reading in a file with ^R, insert it into a new buffer by default.

set noconvert

Don’t convert files from DOS/Mac format.

set nohelp

Don’t display the help lists at the bottom of the screen.

set nonewlines

Don’t automatically add a newline when a text does not end with one. (This can cause you to save non-POSIX text files.)

set nowrap

Deprecated option since it has become the default setting. When needed, use unset breaklonglines instead.

set numbercolor [bold,][italic,]fgcolor,bgcolor

Use this color combination for line numbers. See set keycolor for valid color names.

set operatingdir "directory"

nano only reads and writes files inside "directory" and its subdirectories. Also, the current directory is changed to here, so files are inserted from this directory. By default, the operating directory feature is turned off.

set positionlog

Save the cursor position of files between editing sessions. The cursor position is remembered for the 200 most-recently edited files.

set preserve

Preserve the XOFF and XON sequences (^S and ^Q) so that they are caught by the terminal (stopping and resuming the output).

set promptcolor [bold,][italic,]fgcolor,bgcolor

Use this color combination for the prompt bar. (When this option is not specified, the colors of the title bar are used.) See set keycolor for valid color names.

set punct "characters"

Set the characters treated as closing punctuation when justifying paragraphs. This may not include blank characters. Only the specified closing punctuation, optionally followed by closing brackets (see set brackets), can end sentences. The default value is "!.?".

set quickblank

Make status-bar messages disappear after 1 keystroke instead of after 20. Note that option constantshow overrides this. When option minibar or zero is in effect, quickblank makes a message disappear after 0.8 seconds instead of after the default 1.5 seconds.

set quotestr "regex"

Set the regular expression for matching the quoting part of a line. The default value is "^([ \t]*([!#%:;>|}]|//))+". (Note that \t stands for a literal Tab character.) This makes it possible to rejustify blocks of quoted text when composing email, and to rewrap blocks of line comments when writing source code.

set rawsequences

Interpret escape sequences directly, instead of asking ncurses to translate them. (If you need this option to get some keys to work properly, it means that the terminfo terminal description that is used does not fully match the actual behavior of your terminal. This can happen when you ssh into a BSD machine, for example.) Using this option disables nano’s mouse support.

set rebinddelete

Interpret the Delete and Backspace keys differently so that both work properly. You should only use this option when on your system either Backspace acts like Delete or Delete acts like Backspace.

set regexp

Do regular-expression searches by default. Regular expressions in nano are of the extended type (ERE).

set saveonexit

Save a changed buffer automatically on exit (^X); don’t prompt.

set scrollercolor fgcolor,bgcolor

Use this color combination for the indicator alias "scrollbar". See set keycolor for valid color names.

set selectedcolor [bold,][italic,]fgcolor,bgcolor

Use this color combination for selected text. See set keycolor for valid color names.

set showcursor

Put the cursor on the highlighted item in the file browser, and show the cursor in the help viewer, to aid braille users and people with poor vision.

set smarthome

Make the Home key smarter. When Home is pressed anywhere but at the very beginning of non-whitespace characters on a line, the cursor jumps to that beginning (either forwards or backwards). If the cursor is already at that position, it jumps to the true beginning of the line.

set softwrap

Display lines that exceed the screen’s width over multiple screen lines. (You can make this soft-wrapping occur at whitespace instead of rudely at the screen’s edge, by using also set atblanks.)

set speller "program [argument …]"

Use the given program to do spell checking and correcting. See --speller for details.

set spotlightcolor [bold,][italic,]fgcolor,bgcolor

Use this color combination for highlighting a search match. The default value is black,lightyellow. See set keycolor for valid color names.

set stateflags

Use the top-right corner of the screen for showing some state flags: I when auto-indenting, M when the mark is on, L when hard-wrapping (breaking long lines), R when recording a macro, and S when soft-wrapping. When the buffer is modified, a star (*) is shown after the filename in the center of the title bar.

set statuscolor [bold,][italic,]fgcolor,bgcolor

Use this color combination for the status bar. See set keycolor for valid color names.

set stripecolor [bold,][italic,]fgcolor,bgcolor

Use this color combination for the vertical guiding stripe. See set keycolor for valid color names.

set tabsize number

Use a tab size of number columns. The value of number must be greater than 0. The default value is 8.

set tabstospaces

Convert each typed tab to spaces — to the number of spaces that a tab at that position would take up. (Note: pasted tabs are not converted.)

set titlecolor [bold,][italic,]fgcolor,bgcolor

Use this color combination for the title bar. See set keycolor for valid color names.

set trimblanks

Remove trailing whitespace from wrapped lines when automatic hard-wrapping occurs or when text is justified.

set unix

Save a file by default in Unix format. This overrides nano’s default behavior of saving a file in the format that it had. (This option has no effect when you also use set noconvert.)

set whitespace "characters"

Set the two characters used to indicate the presence of tabs and spaces. They must be single-column characters. The default pair for a UTF-8 locale is "»·", and for other locales ">.".

set wordbounds

Detect word boundaries differently by treating punctuation characters as part of a word.

set wordchars "characters"

Specify which other characters (besides the normal alphanumeric ones) should be considered as parts of words. When using this option, you probably want to unset wordbounds.

set zap

Let an unmodified Backspace or Delete erase the marked region (instead of a single character, and without affecting the cutbuffer).

set zero

Hide all elements of the interface (title bar, status bar, and help lines) and use all rows of the terminal for showing the contents of the buffer. The status bar appears only when there is a significant message, and disappears after 1.5 seconds or upon the next keystroke. With M-Z the title bar plus status bar can be toggled. With M-X the help lines.

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8.2 Syntax Highlighting

Coloring the different syntactic elements of a file is done via regular expressions (see the color command below). This is inherently imperfect, because regular expressions are not powerful enough to fully parse a file. Nevertheless, regular expressions can do a lot and are easy to make, so they are a good fit for a small editor like nano.

See /usr/share/nano/ and /usr/share/nano/extra/ for the syntax-coloring definitions that are available out of the box.

All regular expressions in nano are POSIX extended regular expressions (ERE). This means that ., ?, *, +, ^, $, and several other characters are special. The period . matches any single character, ? means the preceding item is optional, * means the preceding item may be matched zero or more times, + means the preceding item must be matched one or more times, ^ matches the beginning of a line, and $ the end, \< matches the start of a word, and \> the end, and \s matches a blank. It also means that lookahead and lookbehind are not possible. A complete explanation can be found in the manual of GNU grep: info grep regular.

Each regular expression in a nanorc file should be wrapped in double quotes (""). Multiple regular expressions can follow each other on a line by separating them with blanks. This means that a regular expression cannot contain a double quote followed by a blank. When you need this combination inside a regular expression, then either the double quote or the blank should be put between square brackets ([]).

A separate syntax can be defined for each kind of file via the following commands in a nanorc file:

syntax name ["fileregex" …]

Start the definition of a syntax with this name. All subsequent color and other such commands are added to this syntax, until a new syntax command is encountered.

When nano is run, this syntax is automatically activated (for the relevant buffer) if the absolute filename matches the extended regular expression fileregex. Or the syntax can be explicitly activated (for all buffers) by using the -Y or --syntax command-line option followed by the name.

The default syntax is special: it takes no fileregex, and applies to files that don’t match any syntax’s regexes. The none syntax is reserved; specifying it on the command line is the same as not having a syntax at all.

header "regex" …

If from all defined syntaxes no fileregex matched, then compare this regex (or regexes) against the first line of the current file, to determine whether this syntax should be used for it.

magic "regex" …

If no fileregex matched and no header regex matched either, then compare this regex (or regexes) against the result of querying the magic database about the current file, to determine whether this syntax should be used for it. (This querying is done only when libmagic is actually installed on the system and --magic or set magic was given.)

formatter program [argument …]

Run the given program on the full contents of the current buffer.

linter program [argument …]

Use the given program to do a syntax check on the current buffer.

comment "string"

Use the given string for commenting and uncommenting lines. If the string contains a vertical bar or pipe character (|), this designates bracket-style comments; for example, "/*|*/" for CSS files. The characters before the pipe are prepended to the line and the characters after the pipe are appended at the end of the line. If no pipe character is present, the full string is prepended; for example, "#" for Python files. If empty double quotes are specified, the comment/uncomment functions are disabled; for example, "" for JSON. The default value is "#".

tabgives "string"

Make the <Tab> key produce the given string. Useful for languages like Python that want to see only spaces for indentation. This overrides the setting of the tabstospaces option.

color [bold,][italic,]fgcolor,bgcolor "regex" …

Paint all pieces of text that match the extended regular expression "regex" with the given foreground and background colors, at least one of which must be specified. Valid color names are: red, green, blue, magenta, yellow, cyan, white, and black. Each of these eight names may be prefixed with the word light to get a brighter version of that color. The word grey or gray may be used as a synonym for lightblack. On a Linux console, light does not have any effect for a background color.

On terminal emulators that can do at least 256 colors, other valid (but unprefixable) color names are: pink, purple, mauve, lagoon, mint, lime, peach, orange, latte, rosy, beet, plum, sea, sky, slate, teal, sage, brown, ocher, sand, tawny, brick, crimson, and normal — where normal means the default foreground or background color. On such emulators, the color may also be specified as a three-digit hexadecimal number prefixed with #, with the digits representing the amounts of red, green, and blue, respectively. This tells nano to select from the available palette the color that approximates the given values.

The color pair may be preceded by bold and/or italic (separated by commas) to get a bold and/or slanting typeface, if your terminal can do those.

All coloring commands are applied in the order in which they are specified, which means that later commands can recolor stuff that was colored earlier.

icolor [bold,][italic,]fgcolor,bgcolor "regex" …

Same as above, except that the matching is case insensitive.

color [bold,][italic,]fgcolor,bgcolor start="fromrx" end="torx"

Paint all pieces of text whose start matches extended regular expression "fromrx" and whose end matches extended regular expression "torx" with the given foreground and background colors, at least one of which must be specified. This means that, after an initial instance of "fromrx", all text until the first instance of "torx" is colored. This allows syntax highlighting to span multiple lines.

icolor [bold,][italic,]fgcolor,bgcolor start="fromrx" end="torx"

Same as above, except that the matching is case insensitive.

include "syntaxfile"

Read in self-contained color syntaxes from "syntaxfile". Note that "syntaxfile" may contain only the above commands, from syntax to icolor.

extendsyntax name command argument …

Extend the syntax previously defined as "name" with another command. This allows you to add a new color, icolor, header, magic, formatter, linter, comment, or tabgives command to an already defined syntax — useful when you want to slightly improve a syntax defined in one of the system-installed files (which normally are not writable).

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8.3 Rebinding Keys

Key bindings can be changed via the following three commands in a nanorc file:

bind key function menu

Rebinds key to function in the context of menu (or in all menus where the function exists when all is used).

bind key "string" menu

Makes key produce string in the context of menu (or in all menus where the key exists when all is used). Besides literal text and/or control codes, the string may contain function names between braces. These functions are invoked when the key is typed. To include a literal opening brace, use {{}.

unbind key menu

Unbinds key from menu (or from all menus where the key exists when all is used).

Note that bind key "{function}" menu is equivalent to bind key function menu, except that for the latter form nano checks the availability of the function in the given menu at startup time (and reports an error if it does not exist there), whereas for the first form nano checks at execution time that the function exists but not whether it makes any sense in the current menu. The user has to take care that a function name between braces (or any sequence of them) is appropriate. Strange behavior or even a crash can result when the braced name is unfitting.

The format of key should be one of:

^X

where X is a Latin letter, or one of several ASCII characters (@, ], \, ^, _), or the word "Space". Example: ^C.

M-X

where X is any ASCII character except [, or the word "Space". Example: M-8.

Sh-M-X

where X is a Latin letter. Example: Sh-M-U. By default, each Meta+letter keystroke does the same as the corresponding Shift+Meta+letter. But when any Shift+Meta bind is made, that will no longer be the case, for all letters.

Fn

where n is a numeric value from 1 to 24. Example: F10. (Often, F13 to F24 can be typed as F1 to F12 with Shift.)

Ins or Del

Rebinding ^M (Enter) or ^I (Tab) is probably not a good idea. Rebinding ^[ (Esc) is not possible, because its keycode is the starter byte of Meta keystrokes and escape sequences. Rebinding any of the dedicated cursor-moving keys (the arrows, Home, End, PageUp and PageDown) is not possible. On some terminals it’s not possible to rebind ^H (unless --raw is used) because its keycode is identical to that of the Backspace key.

Valid names for the function to be bound are:

help

Invokes the help viewer.

cancel

Cancels the current command.

exit

Exits from the program (or from the help viewer or file browser).

writeout

Writes the current buffer to disk, asking for a name.

savefile

Writes the current file to disk without prompting.

insert

Inserts a file into the current buffer (at the current cursor position), or into a new buffer when option multibuffer is set.

whereis

Starts a forward search for text in the current buffer — or for filenames matching a string in the current list in the file browser.

wherewas

Starts a backward search for text in the current buffer — or for filenames matching a string in the current list in the file browser.

findprevious

Searches the next occurrence in the backward direction.

findnext

Searches the next occurrence in the forward direction.

replace

Interactively replaces text within the current buffer.

cut

Cuts and stores the current line (or the marked region).

copy

Copies the current line (or the marked region) without deleting it.

paste

Pastes the currently stored text into the current buffer at the current cursor position.

zap

Throws away the current line (or the marked region). (This function is bound by default to Alt+Delete.)

chopwordleft

Deletes from the cursor position to the beginning of the preceding word. (This function is bound by default to Shift+Ctrl+Delete. If your terminal produces ^H for Ctrl+Backspace, you can make Ctrl+Backspace delete the word to the left of the cursor by rebinding ^H to this function.)

chopwordright

Deletes from the cursor position to the beginning of the next word. (This function is bound by default to Ctrl+Delete.)

cutrestoffile

Cuts all text from the cursor position till the end of the buffer.

mark

Sets the mark at the current position, to start selecting text. Or, when it is set, unsets the mark.

location

Reports the current position of the cursor in the buffer: the line, column, and character positions.

wordcount

Counts and reports on the status bar the number of lines, words, and characters in the current buffer (or in the marked region).

execute

Prompts for a program to execute. The program’s output will be inserted into the current buffer (or into a new buffer when M-F is toggled).

speller

Invokes a spell-checking program, either the default hunspell or GNU spell, or the one defined by --speller or set speller.

formatter

Invokes a full-buffer-processing program (if the active syntax defines one). (The current buffer is written out to a temporary file, the program is run on it, and then the temporary file is read back in, replacing the contents of the buffer.)

linter

Invokes a syntax-checking program (if the active syntax defines one). If this program produces lines of the form "filename:linenum:charnum: some message", then the cursor is put at the indicated position in the mentioned file while showing "some message" on the status bar. You can move from message to message with PgUp and PgDn, and leave linting mode with ^C or Enter.

justify

Justifies the current paragraph (or the marked region). A paragraph is a group of contiguous lines that, apart from possibly the first line, all have the same indentation. The beginning of a paragraph is detected by either this lone line with a differing indentation or by a preceding blank line.

fulljustify

Justifies the entire current buffer (or the marked region).

indent

Indents (shifts to the right) the current line or the marked lines.

unindent

Unindents (shifts to the left) the current line or the marked lines.

comment

Comments or uncomments the current line or the marked lines, using the comment style specified in the active syntax.

complete

Completes (when possible) the fragment before the cursor to a full word found elsewhere in the current buffer.

left

Goes left one position (in the editor or browser).

right

Goes right one position (in the editor or browser).

up

Goes one line up (in the editor or browser).

down

Goes one line down (in the editor or browser).

scrollup

Scrolls the viewport up one row (meaning that the text slides down) while keeping the cursor in the same text position, if possible. (This function is bound by default to Alt+Up. If Alt+Up does nothing on your Linux console, see the FAQ: https://nano-editor.org/dist/latest/faq.html#4.1.)

scrolldown

Scrolls the viewport down one row (meaning that the text slides up) while keeping the cursor in the same text position, if possible. (This function is bound by default to Alt+Down.)

center

Scrolls the line with the cursor to the middle of the viewport.

cycle

Scrolls the line with the cursor first to the middle of the viewport, then to the top, then to the bottom.

prevword

Moves the cursor to the beginning of the previous word.

nextword

Moves the cursor to the beginning of the next word.

home

Moves the cursor to the beginning of the current line.

end

Moves the cursor to the end of the current line.

beginpara

Moves the cursor to the beginning of the current paragraph.

endpara

Moves the cursor to the end of the current paragraph.

prevblock

Moves the cursor to the beginning of the current or preceding block of text. (Blocks are separated by one or more blank lines.)

nextblock

Moves the cursor to the beginning of the next block of text.

toprow

Moves the cursor to the first row in the viewport.

bottomrow

Moves the cursor to the last row in the viewport.

pageup

Goes up one screenful.

pagedown

Goes down one screenful.

firstline

Goes to the first line of the file.

lastline

Goes to the last line of the file.

gotoline

Goes to a specific line (and column if specified). Negative numbers count from the end of the file (and end of the line).

findbracket

Moves the cursor to the bracket (or brace or parenthesis, etc.) that matches (pairs) with the one under the cursor. See set matchbrackets.

anchor

Places an anchor at the current line, or removes it when already present. (An anchor is visible when line numbers are activated.)

prevanchor

Goes to the first anchor before the current line.

nextanchor

Goes to the first anchor after the current line.

prevbuf

Switches to editing/viewing the previous buffer when multiple buffers are open.

nextbuf

Switches to editing/viewing the next buffer when multiple buffers are open.

verbatim

Inserts the next keystroke verbatim into the file, or begins Unicode input when a hexadecimal digit is typed (see Entering Text for details).

tab

Inserts a tab at the current cursor location.

enter

Inserts a new line below the current one.

delete

Deletes the character under the cursor.

backspace

Deletes the character before the cursor.

recordmacro

Starts the recording of keystrokes — the keystrokes are stored as a macro. When already recording, the recording is stopped.

runmacro

Replays the keystrokes of the last recorded macro.

undo

Undoes the last performed text action (add text, delete text, etc).

redo

Redoes the last undone action (i.e., it undoes an undo).

refresh

Refreshes the screen.

suspend

Suspends the editor and returns control to the shell (until you tell the process to resume execution with fg).

casesens

Toggles whether searching/replacing ignores or respects the case of the given characters.

regexp

Toggles whether searching/replacing uses literal strings or regular expressions.

backwards

Toggles whether searching/replacing goes forward or backward.

older

Retrieves the previous (earlier) entry at a prompt.

newer

Retrieves the next (later) entry at a prompt.

flipreplace

Toggles between searching for something and replacing something.

flipgoto

Toggles between searching for text and targeting a line number.

flipexecute

Switches from inserting a file to executing a command.

flippipe

When executing a command, toggles whether the current buffer (or marked region) is piped to the command.

flipnewbuffer

Toggles between inserting into the current buffer and into a new empty buffer.

flipconvert

When reading in a file, toggles between converting and not converting it from DOS/Mac format. Converting is the default.

dosformat

When writing a file, switches to writing a DOS format (CR/LF).

macformat

When writing a file, switches to writing a Mac format.

append

When writing a file, appends to the end instead of overwriting.

prepend

When writing a file, ’prepends’ (writes at the beginning) instead of overwriting.

backup

When writing a file, creates a backup of the current file.

discardbuffer

When about to write a file, discard the current buffer without saving. (This function is bound by default only when option --saveonexit is in effect.)

browser

Starts the file browser (in the Read File and Write Out menus), allowing to select a file from a list.

gotodir

Goes to a directory to be specified, allowing to browse anywhere in the filesystem.

firstfile

Goes to the first file in the list when using the file browser.

lastfile

Goes to the last file in the list when using the file browser.

nohelp

Toggles the presence of the two-line list of key bindings at the bottom of the screen. (This toggle is special: it is available in all menus except the help viewer and the linter. All further toggles are available in the main menu only.)

zero

Toggles the presence of title bar and status bar.

constantshow

Toggles the constant display of the current line, column, and character positions.

softwrap

Toggles the displaying of overlong lines on multiple screen lines.

linenumbers

Toggles the display of line numbers in front of the text.

whitespacedisplay

Toggles the showing of whitespace.

nosyntax

Toggles syntax highlighting.

smarthome

Toggles the smartness of the Home key.

autoindent

Toggles whether a newly created line will contain the same amount of leading whitespace as the preceding line — or as the next line if the preceding line is the beginning of a paragraph.

cutfromcursor

Toggles whether cutting text cuts the whole line or just from the current cursor position to the end of the line.

breaklonglines

Toggles whether the overlong part of a line is hard-wrapped to the next line.

tabstospaces

Toggles whether typed tabs are converted to spaces.

mouse

Toggles mouse support.

Valid names for menu are:

main

The main editor window where text is entered and edited.

help

The help-viewer menu.

search

The search menu (AKA whereis).

replace

The ’search to replace’ menu.

replacewith

The ’replace with’ menu, which comes up after ’search to replace’.

yesno

The ’yesno’ menu, where the Yes/No/All/Cancel question is asked.

gotoline

The ’goto line (and column)’ menu.

writeout

The ’write file’ menu.

insert

The ’insert file’ menu.

browser

The ’file browser’ menu, for selecting a file to be opened or inserted or written to.

whereisfile

The ’search for a file’ menu in the file browser.

gotodir

The ’go to directory’ menu in the file browser.

execute

The menu for inserting the output from an external command, or for filtering the buffer (or the marked region) through an external command, or for executing one of several tools.

spell

The menu of the integrated spell checker where the user can edit a misspelled word.

linter

The linter menu, which allows jumping through the linting messages.

all

A special name that encompasses all menus. For bind it means all menus where the specified function exists; for unbind it means all menus where the specified key exists.

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