mg

mg [options] [files]

mg is a micro GNU Emacs-style editor. It provides basic Emacs keybindings in a lightweight package, making it ideal for quick edits on minimal systems.Common keybindings: C-x C-s (save), C-x C-c (quit), C-x C-f (open file), C-s (incremental search), C-x b (switch buffer), C-x k (kill buffer), C-space (set mark), C-w (cut region), M-w (copy region), C-y (paste), C-x u (undo).mg is the default editor on OpenBSD and is available on other BSD and Linux systems.

FILES

Files to edit.

Start at specified line number.

Read-only (view) mode.

Turn off backup file generation.

Run the given mode at startup (e.g., -f auto-fill-mode).

Much more limited than GNU Emacs. No Emacs Lisp extension support, no syntax highlighting, no Unicode support. Intended for basic text editing only.

mg was originally named MicroGNUEmacs (later shortened to mg), created in 1986 by Dave Conroy for systems where full GNU Emacs was too large. It was subsequently maintained by various contributors and is now part of the OpenBSD base system.

emacs(1), nano(1), vi(1)