Unix Edit Survival Notes

Traditional fine unix editors include emacs and vi. Emacs generally prefers an X connection but can also be invoked as emacs -nw if this is not present. In that case, mice will not be directly usable. Vi is not X based and so will also not directly use the mice. For people who do not want to invest the time to learn one of these, the editor pico (the editor in the pine mail program) may be useful.
vi
uses modes. Hitting the ESCAPE key gets you into command mode where motion is possible using the h,j,k, and l keys (maybe arrow keys too) and quitting without saving is possible via typing the three characters :q!. Hitting i will get you from command mode to insert mode. More details at Basic keystrokes in vi or vi reference or
Quitting Emacs
is traditionally done by the sequence control-c control-s. More details at Basic keystrokes in emacs

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Last Update: October 6, 1998