Linux – Windows-style, terminal based, text editor for linux

linuxterminaltext-editors

Every once in a while, I find myself editing some text file on a remote Linux server. Most of the time, I do my best to avoid this, because I'm used to, and like, the windows way of editing files:

  • Shift+arrows to highlight text
  • Ctrl-X,C,V for cut/copy/paste
  • Tab/Shift Tab to indent/dedent highlighted text
  • etc…

I'm not saying that vi and emacs are bad, it's just that I'm not used to them. Right now nano is my editor of choice, but it has very limited support of cut and paste, no smart indent, and some unusual shortcuts.

so my question is: it there an editor that feels like Notepad++/Notepad2/eclipse/kate/gedit but can run on a linux terminal?
Alternatively, is there a way to configure vi/emacs/nano to feel more like those apps?

And please, no "you should really learn vi" answers. Tried that, didn't take.

UPDATE: I was suffering from keyword blockage. Googling for "linux console text editors" gets much better results than "linux terminal text editors".

Best Answer

Have a look at the Sanos editor:

http://www.jbox.dk/sanos/editor.htm

Only a 28k binary can do what all those other editors try to -- and fail.

It does exactly what the OP asked for:

Shift+arrows to highlight text

Ctrl-X,C,V for cut/copy/paste

You can also have several open files simultaneously, and "pipe" commands into it. For example, press Ctrl-P and at the prompt enter:

cat yourfile

and it will insert yourfile at the position of the cursor. This way the full power of the bash commands are at your disposal ( use grep to get only specific parts of the file inserted ).

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