What's your favorite CLI text editor?

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What's your favorite CLI text editor?

Poll ended at Thu May 17, 2018 3:28 pm

GNU nano / Pico
11
44%
Vi / Vim
9
36%
GNU Emacs
0
No votes
Ed
1
4%
Other
4
16%
 
Total votes: 25

Kyowash

What's your favorite CLI text editor?

Post by Kyowash »

I'm curious, what's your favorite command line text editor, or which one do you use the most?
I personally prefer GNU nano, it's easy to use and lists most of the shortcuts at the bottom. I'm considering to learn to use a more powerful editor like Vim this summer, tough.

Please, don't use this topic to start a text editor war. The reason I made this topic is because I would like to know the most used command line text editor among Linux Mint users.
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
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Flemur
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Re: What's your favorite CLI text editor?

Post by Flemur »

I usually use "vi", having gone thru its learning curve years ago, for a GUI editor "leafpad".
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Re: What's your favorite CLI text editor?

Post by slipstick »

Only nano. I edit from the CL so seldom that I can't justify the time or effort to learn vim or emacs.
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Re: What's your favorite CLI text editor?

Post by xenopeek »

I picked other. I'm using micro: https://micro-editor.github.io/. It's like nano but on steroids :)

I used slap editor in the past (it's a CLI sublime like editor) but development of that was abandoned 2 years ago. micro is a nice improvement over nano. Just download the Linux tar.gz file, extract the micro file and put it in a bin directory in your path.
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Kyowash

Re: What's your favorite CLI text editor?

Post by Kyowash »

Flemur wrote: Wed May 02, 2018 3:33 pm I usually use "vi", having gone thru its learning curve years ago, for a GUI editor "leafpad".
How did you overcome its learning curve? Did you use a web tutorial? Or it was enough to read the manpage and put it into practice?
xenopeek wrote: Thu May 03, 2018 4:29 am I picked other. I'm using micro: https://micro-editor.github.io/. It's like nano but on steroids :)

I used slap editor in the past (it's a CLI sublime like editor) but development of that was abandoned 2 years ago. micro is a nice improvement over nano. Just download the Linux tar.gz file, extract the micro file and put it in a bin directory in your path.
Yeah, I've heard of slap, but I never gave it a try because I have never used Sublime Text (yes, I'm not joking. Even if you can use it without a license) so I don't need an editor based on it.
I once tried Micro, I was amazed how easy to install it was. But for some reason I preferred to stick with nano... I will consider to install it again one day. However, I must say micro gets an unexplainable amount of hate because it's written in Go.
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Re: What's your favorite CLI text editor?

Post by Flemur »

Kyowash wrote: Thu May 03, 2018 2:03 pmHow did you overcome its [vi] learning curve? Did you use a web tutorial? Or it was enough to read the manpage and put it into practice?
It was back when Unix was new and I didn't have any choice! Switching back-and-forth between vi and regular "text box" editing, like this forum or leafpad, can sometimes be ... interesting.

This is reminding me of the first on-screen text editor I ever saw, on an IBM 370 (360?), because it was such a big step up from punch cards.
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Re: What's your favorite CLI text editor?

Post by xenopeek »

Kyowash wrote: Thu May 03, 2018 2:03 pmHowever, I must say micro gets an unexplainable amount of hate because it's written in Go.
I think at the time I switched to Micro I was exploring Go so that's how I may have ended up on it; looking for what people were writing in Go.

Currently trying to get into Rust and that already led me down the same path to some new programs on my system :lol: And just stumbled across Google's Xi Editor https://google.github.io/xi-editor/
Kyowash wrote: Thu May 03, 2018 2:03 pm
Flemur wrote: Wed May 02, 2018 3:33 pm I usually use "vi", having gone thru its learning curve years ago, for a GUI editor "leafpad".
How did you overcome its learning curve? Did you use a web tutorial? Or it was enough to read the manpage and put it into practice?
I learned it back in the day on Unix machines. Didn't have anything else so just had to muddle through it.
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Re: What's your favorite CLI text editor?

Post by Kyowash »

Flemur wrote: Thu May 03, 2018 2:16 pm It was back when Unix was new and I didn't have any choice! Switching back-and-forth between vi and regular "text box" editing, like this forum or leafpad, can sometimes be ... interesting.
xenopeek wrote: Thu May 03, 2018 2:24 pm I learned it back in the day on Unix machines. Didn't have anything else so just had to muddle through it.
Oh, well. I guess being the only choice is also a reason to learn it. :)
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I don't know why, but my desire to learn Vi is increasing greatly. :mrgreen:
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Re: What's your favorite CLI text editor?

Post by Hoser Rob »

I also had to learn vi for Unix in the 80s but I've blissfully forgotten how to use it :wink: . Now I use leafpad.
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Re: What's your favorite CLI text editor?

Post by Portreve »

I use nano here. I've really never seen the point in anything else unless you're actually writing code, in which case emacs and vi are I assume the best of breed.

When I'm editing a text file (which is to say, a configuration file) I want to get into and out of it as efficiently and unencumbered-ly as possible.

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Re: What's your favorite CLI text editor?

Post by Arch_Enemy »

Flemur wrote: Wed May 02, 2018 3:33 pm I usually use "vi", having gone thru its learning curve years ago, for a GUI editor "leafpad".
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We had a French exchange student come to work at my company and he made up a quick web page for internal use to submit news and messages to the employees. I asked him what web page editor he used.

"VIM" was his answer! :shock:

PS: Whoever came up with vi in the first place back in the day must have also had a Hewlett-Packard calculator...
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Re: What's your favorite CLI text editor?

Post by timapple »

For those who want to get their feet wet with Vi/Vim this helps quite a bit.

http://www.openvim.com/tutorial.html
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Re: What's your favorite CLI text editor?

Post by Fred Barclay »

Vi or vim for me. But I rarely use it, usually only when initially setting up Arch and I need to edit /etc/hosts or something. Otherwise it's usually pluma or Atom for me. :)

Poor old Emacs doesn't have any votes yet. :(
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Kyowash

Re: What's your favorite CLI text editor?

Post by Kyowash »

timapple wrote: Mon May 07, 2018 8:32 pm For those who want to get their feet wet with Vi/Vim this helps quite a bit.

http://www.openvim.com/tutorial.html
This is the tutorial I'm using, it's very understandable and well-written. I can now see why Vim is said to be more powerful than CLI text editor like Nano, and I've got to say it's not that hard. Sure, there are things like the movement with the h, j, k and l keys which are odd and hard to get used to, but after 6 days following the tutorial the movement with those keys feels natural. Another shocking feature is its different modes to edit, view, save, etc. I think this is probably why people refuse to use it. I felt helplessness for not being able to close Vim. :oops:
Fred Barclay wrote: Mon May 07, 2018 10:26 pm Poor old Emacs doesn't have any votes yet. :(
I am quite surprised because of this as well.
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