It’s the best way to edit text files when you first start. This is a handy compromise between working on the command line and text editing in a friendly graphical environment. You can open a text file in Text Editor from the command line using xdg-open (this will open a file in its default associated app). To view the text one page at a time, pipe it through more and press SPACE to move one page at a time.

The text will fly up off the top of the screen. Open the Terminal and enter cat release_notes.txt. The way to do this is using cat (short for ‘concatenate’). Often you’ll be working with text files from the command line. Open the File Manager and double-click the release_notes.txt file to view it in Text Editor.

Right-click and save the file to your Pi folder. We’ve downloaded the release notes for the latest version of Raspbian to view and edit. Here were going to look at the two main options: Text Editor (also called Leafpad) and Nano. There are a lot of different ways to edit text, and everybody has their own favourites. No matter – you will now need to edit text. You may remember the days when computers had text-based interfaces, or you may have only pushed buttons and tapped icons until now. It lets you get under the hood and really see what’s going on. In Raspbian, which is based on Debian Linux, you are far more likely to need to edit text files than on computers running MacOS or Windows. Every menu, every button, and every setting of every program started as a text document somewhere. A secret that most computer makers don’t tell you is that underneath all the gloss and shine of modern operating systems, it’s all text. It's all part of learning how computers really work. Learning how to edit text files in the console and from the Raspbian GUI is a rite of passage for new Raspberry Pi owners.

How to edit text file in terminal mac