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Basic

§ 6: Editing Files

While it may be interesting to read files, it's necessary to change some if you want to accomplish anything on a computer. One way to change the contents of a file is with a text editor.

There are five editors you are likely to find:

The vi editor is powerful, rather universal, effective even over nongraphics terminals, and rather dated. That's why the vim editor is there - it offers more options, such as syntax highlighting (at least under Linux). The pico editor is more modern, and is pretty nice for a non-mouse editor. The emacs editor, which you can learn about in our emacs tutorial (section 15), is a powerful editor which does so much that some people consider it close to an operating system! It certainly is a bit much at first. However, it and the nedit editors are mouse driven and similar to the word processors used on PCs or Macs; although nedit might be the best editor for novices.

All of these editors are self-documenting, which means they contain tutorials or help documents that you can run once you're in the editor. The commands to start the tutorials will be given as the editors are discussed.

After you have completed the instructional portions of this section, you will be asked to complete a Review Quiz in which you construct a home page for the World Wide Web. You will continue to work with your home page throughout the tutorial.

  1. Using vi
    1. Moving
    2. Making Changes
    3. Saving and Exiting
  2. Other Editors
  3. Getting Some Practice
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