3.1 Console Text Editors

This section describes editor that you can use in a terminal. A terminal can be the console, an SSH (secure shell) or telnet window, or an xterm in a GUI (graphical user interface).

For beginners, nano is a simple text editor that requires very little time to master. It lacks many features that are useful for programmers.

For people who plan to edit text/code in a CLI environment for some time, vi and vim are common. The initial learning curve of vi is steep, but it provides year after year of efficient text/code editing.