Chapter 4. Edit Files

This chapter is about creating and editing text files using the Unix text editors supplied with Mac OS X. It also takes a quick look at some graphical-based text editors. The seven projects cover the following topics:

  • nano: a simple text editor that’s easy to use and sufficiently full featured to use as your everyday editor.

  • emacs: a big, fat, full-featured text editor that’ll do all you want and more besides. It includes an extensive interactive help system and tutorials, making it easy to pick up the basics.

  • vim: a programmer’s editor with syntax highlighting and a programmatic approach to forming edit commands. Like emacs, it has an extensive online help system. vim is upward-compatible with the older vi (pronounced vee eye ...

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