Editing Commands for Pine and Pico

These commands may be used to edit an e-mail message while composing or a Unix file. Many of them are the same as Pine commands.

To open a file in your home directory to view or edit, type pico filename at the $ prompt: $pico test(where test is the name of the file) This will open up the file for you to edit using pico commands. To exit the file, type ^X (control X) and answer Y(es) when it asks if you would like to save the changes. You can save periodically without exiting by typing ^O (control O). ^Gdisplay the help text (^ = control)
^Fmove forward a character
^Bmove backward a character
^Pmove to the previous line
^Nmove to the next line
^Amove to the beginning of the current line
^Emove to the end of the current line
^Vmove forward a page of text
^Ymove back a page of text
^Wsearch for (where is) text; not case-sensitive
^Lrefresh the display
^Ddelete the character at the cursor position
^Kcut selected text (generally the current line)
^Uuncut (paste) last cut text inserting it at the current cursor position
^Iinsert a tab at the current cursor position
^Tjustify the current paragraph
^Creport current cursor position
^Rinsert an external file at the current cursor position
^Ooutput the current buffer to a file, saving it
^Xexit pico, saving buffer

<< back to index