Pico Text Editor

Getting Started

Pico is the built-in editor from the Pine email client and the predecessor of Nano. It shows available shortcuts at the bottom of the screen; the ^ symbol means Ctrl.

$ pico textfile.txt

$ pico +25 textfile.txt

Key	Description
Ctrl+g	Display help text
Ctrl+x	Exit pico (prompts to save if modified)

Many systems no longer ship pico; its open-source successor nano uses the same keybindings, and pico is often just an alias for it.

Navigation

Use arrow keys for basic movement, or these Emacs-style shortcuts.

Key	Description
Ctrl+f	Move forward one character
Ctrl+b	Move backward one character
Ctrl+n	Move to next line
Ctrl+p	Move to previous line
Ctrl+a	Move to beginning of line
Ctrl+e	Move to end of line
Ctrl+v	Scroll down one page
Ctrl+y	Scroll up one page
Ctrl+c	Show current cursor position

File Operations

Pico prompts for a filename when saving.

Key	Description
Ctrl+o	Write out (save) the current file
Ctrl+r	Read (insert) another file into the current one

Editing

Use Ctrl+^ to start selecting text, then move the cursor to extend the selection.

Key	Description
Ctrl+d	Delete the character under the cursor
Ctrl+^	Mark text (start selection)
Ctrl+k	Cut the current line (or selected text)
Ctrl+u	Paste (uncut) the last cut text
Ctrl+i	Insert a tab
Ctrl+j	Justify the current paragraph
Ctrl+t	Spell check
Ctrl+l	Refresh the display

Search

Ctrl+W stands for "Where is". Press Enter at the prompt to repeat the previous search.

Key	Description
Ctrl+w	Search for text