नैनो चीटशीट

GNU nano is a small, modeless terminal editor: you start typing straight away, and every command is a control or meta chord shown along the bottom of the screen.

ℹ️ nano’s own help writes ^X for Ctrl+X and M-X for Alt+X (Meta). This sheet spells them out. On macOS, Alt is usually Esc pressed first, or Option with “Use Option as Meta” enabled.

🚀 Starting nano

# open a file (created on save if it does not exist)
nano <file>

# jump straight to a line, or a line and column
nano +42 <file>
nano +42,8 <file>

# show line numbers
nano -l <file>

# enable mouse support
nano -m <file>

# keep the indentation of the previous line
nano -i <file>

# convert typed tabs to spaces, 4 wide
nano -ET4 <file>

# do not wrap long lines
nano -w <file>

# keep a backup of the original as file~
nano -B <file>

# read-only view mode
nano -v <file>

# open at the position you left last time
nano -P <file>

💾 File Handling

✏️ Editing

🔎 Search & Replace

💡 At the search prompt, Alt+C toggles case sensitivity, Alt+R switches to regular expressions and Alt+B limits the search to the selection.

⌫ Deletion

🧭 Moving Around

🔧 Operations

ℹ️ Information & Display

⚙️ Configuration

Persistent settings live in ~/.nanorc (system-wide: /etc/nanorc).

set linenumbers
set mouse
set tabsize 4
set tabstospaces
set autoindent
set constantshow
set softwrap
set positionlog

# syntax highlighting definitions shipped with nano
include /usr/share/nano/*.nanorc

📚 Resources

• Official documentation
• Manual page
• Built-in help: Ctrl+G