FreeBSD® Unleashed

Working with Text

One of the most common applications that almost everyone needs is a basic text editor.

Unlike a word processor, a text editor simply works on plain-text files. It does not have the ability to store font changes, margins, or any other such information in the document. Here are some common uses of a text editor:

• Editing system configuration files: FreeBSD, like most other versions of UNIX, relies heavily on text-based configuration files to control system behavior. To edit these files, you will need a text editor that can write a plain-text file. Using a word processor on these configuration files would ruin them because the operating system would not understand the strange formatting that the word processor saves with the document. ...