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home | helpx minix x x minixx NANORC(5) File Formats Manual NANORC(5) NAME nanorc - GNU nano's configuration file DESCRIPTION The nanorc files contain the default settings for nano, a small and friendly editor. They should be in Unix format, not in DOS or Mac for- mat. During startup, if --rcfile is not given, nano will read two files: first the system-wide settings, from /etc/nanorc (the exact path might be different on your system), and then the user-specific set- tings, either from ~/.nanorc or from $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/nano/nanorc or from ~/.config/nano/nanorc, whichever is encountered first. If --rc- file is given, nano will read just the specified settings file. NOTICE Since version 4.0, nano by default: o does not automatically hard-wrap lines that become overlong, o includes the line below the title bar in the editing area, o does linewise (smooth) scrolling. To get the old, Pico behavior back, you can use set breaklonglines, set emptyline, and set jumpyscrolling. OPTIONS The configuration file accepts a series of set and unset commands, which can be used to configure nano on startup without using command- line options. Additionally, there are some commands to define syntax highlighting and to rebind keys -- see the two separate sections on those. nano reads one command per line. All commands and keywords should be written in lowercase. Options in nanorc files take precedence over nano's defaults, and com- mand-line options override nanorc settings. Also, options that do not take an argument are unset by default. So using the unset command is only needed when wanting to override a setting of the system's nanorc file in your own nanorc. Options that take an argument cannot be un- set. Quotes inside the characters parameters below should not be escaped. The last double quote on the line will be seen as the closing quote. The supported commands and arguments are: set afterends Make Ctrl+Right stop at word ends instead of beginnings. set allow_insecure_backup When backing up files, allow the backup to succeed even if its per- missions can't be (re)set due to special OS considerations. You should NOT enable this option unless you are sure you need it. set atblanks When soft line wrapping is enabled, make it wrap lines at blank characters (tabs and spaces) instead of always at the edge of the screen. set autoindent Automatically indent a newly created line to the same number of tabs and/or spaces as the previous line (or as the next line if the pre- vious line is the beginning of a paragraph). set backup When saving a file, create a backup file by adding a tilde (~) to the file's name. set backupdir directory Make and keep not just one backup file, but make and keep a uniquely numbered one every time a file is saved -- when backups are enabled with set backup or --backup or -B. The uniquely numbered files are stored in the specified directory. set boldtext Use bold instead of reverse video for the title bar, status bar, key combos, function tags, line numbers, and selected text. This can be overridden by setting the options titlecolor, statuscolor, keycolor, functioncolor, numbercolor, and selectedcolor. set brackets "characters" Set the characters treated as closing brackets when justifying para- graphs. This may not include blank characters. Only closing punc- tuation (see set punct), optionally followed by the specified clos- ing brackets, can end sentences. The default value is ""')>]}". set breaklonglines Automatically hard-wrap the current line when it becomes overlong. set casesensitive Do case-sensitive searches by default. set constantshow Constantly display the cursor position in the status bar. This overrides the option quickblank. set cutfromcursor Use cut-from-cursor-to-end-of-line by default, instead of cutting the whole line. set emptyline Do not use the line below the title bar, leaving it entirely blank. set errorcolor fgcolor,bgcolor Use this color combination for the status bar when an error message is displayed. The default value is brightwhite,red. See set title- color for valid color names. set fill number Set the target width for justifying and automatic hard-wrapping at this number of columns. If the value is 0 or less, wrapping will occur at the width of the screen minus number columns, allowing the wrap point to vary along with the width of the screen if the screen is resized. The default value is -8. set functioncolor fgcolor,bgcolor Specify the color combination to use for the function descriptions in the two help lines at the bottom of the screen. See set title- color for more details. set guidestripe number Draw a vertical stripe at the given column, to help judge the width of the text. (The color of the stripe can be changed with set stripecolor.) set historylog Save the last hundred search strings and replacement strings and ex- ecuted commands, so they can be easily reused in later sessions. set jumpyscrolling Scroll the buffer contents per half-screen instead of per line. set keycolor fgcolor,bgcolor Specify the color combination to use for the shortcut key combos in the two help lines at the bottom of the screen. See set titlecolor for more details. set linenumbers Display line numbers to the left of the text area. set locking Enable vim-style lock-files for when editing files. set matchbrackets "characters" Set the opening and closing brackets that can be found by bracket searches. This may not include blank characters. The opening set must come before the closing set, and the two sets must be in the same order. The default value is "(<[{)>]}". set morespace Deprecated option since it has become the default setting. When needed, use unset emptyline instead. set mouse Enable mouse support, if available for your system. When enabled, mouse clicks can be used to place the cursor, set the mark (with a double click), and execute shortcuts. The mouse will work in the X Window System, and on the console when gpm is running. Text can still be selected through dragging by holding down the Shift key. set multibuffer When reading in a file with ^R, insert it into a new buffer by de- fault. set noconvert Don't convert files from DOS/Mac format. set nohelp Don't display the two help lines at the bottom of the screen. set nonewlines Don't automatically add a newline when a text does not end with one. (This can cause you to save non-POSIX text files.) set nopauses Obsolete option. Ignored. set nowrap Deprecated option since it has become the default setting. When needed, use unset breaklonglines instead. set numbercolor fgcolor,bgcolor Specify the color combination to use for line numbers. See set ti- tlecolor for more details. set operatingdir directory nano will only read and write files inside directory and its subdi- rectories. Also, the current directory is changed to here, so files are inserted from this directory. By default, the operating direc- tory feature is turned off. set positionlog Save the cursor position of files between editing sessions. The cursor position is remembered for the 200 most-recently edited files. set preserve Preserve the XON and XOFF keys (^Q and ^S). set punct "characters" Set the characters treated as closing punctuation when justifying paragraphs. This may not include blank characters. Only the spec- fified closing punctuation, optionally followed by closing brackets (see brackets), can end sentences. The default value is "!.?". set quickblank Do quick status-bar blanking: status-bar messages will disappear af- ter 1 keystroke instead of 25. The option constantshow overrides this. set quotestr "regex" Set the regular expression for matching the quoting part of a line. The default value is "^([ \t]*([!#%:;>|}]|//))+". (Note that \t stands for an actual Tab character.) This makes it possible to re- justify blocks of quoted text when composing email, and to rewrap blocks of line comments when writing source code. set rawsequences Interpret escape sequences directly (instead of asking ncurses to translate them). If you need this option to get your keyboard to work properly, please report a bug. Using this option disables nano's mouse support. set rebinddelete Interpret the Delete and Backspace keys differently so that both Backspace and Delete work properly. You should only use this option when on your system either Backspace acts like Delete or Delete acts like Backspace. set regexp Do regular-expression searches by default. Regular expressions in nano are of the extended type (ERE). set selectedcolor fgcolor,bgcolor Specify the color combination to use for selected text. See set ti- tlecolor for more details. set showcursor Put the cursor on the highlighted item in the file browser, to aid braille users. set smarthome Make the Home key smarter. When Home is pressed anywhere but at the very beginning of non-whitespace characters on a line, the cursor will jump to that beginning (either forwards or backwards). If the cursor is already at that position, it will jump to the true begin- ning of the line. set smooth Deprecated option since it has become the default setting. When needed, use unset jumpyscrolling instead. set softwrap Enable soft line wrapping for easier viewing of very long lines. set speller "program [argument ...]" Use the given program to do spell checking and correcting, instead of using the built-in corrector that calls hunspell or GNU spell. set statuscolor fgcolor,bgcolor Specify the color combination to use for the status bar. See set titlecolor for more details. set stripecolor fgcolor,bgcolor Specify the color combination to use for the vertical guiding stripe. See set titlecolor for more details. set suspend Allow nano to be suspended. set tabsize number Use a tab size of number columns. The value of number must be greater than 0. The default value is 8. set tabstospaces Convert typed tabs to spaces. set tempfile Save automatically on exit, don't prompt. set titlecolor fgcolor,bgcolor Specify the color combination to use for the title bar. Valid names for the foreground and background colors are: white, black, blue, green, red, cyan, yellow, magenta, and normal -- where normal means the default foreground or background color. The name of the fore- ground color may be prefixed with bright. And either "fgcolor" or ",bgcolor" may be left out. set trimblanks Remove trailing whitespace from wrapped lines when automatic hard- wrapping occurs or when text is justified. set unix Save a file by default in Unix format. This overrides nano's de- fault behavior of saving a file in the format that it had. (This option has no effect when you also use set noconvert.) set view Disallow file modification: read-only mode. This mode allows the user to open also other files for viewing, unless --restricted is given on the command line. set whitespace "characters" Set the two characters used to indicate the presence of tabs and spaces. They must be single-column characters. The default pair for a UTF-8 locale is ">>.", and for other locales ">.". set wordbounds Detect word boundaries differently by treating punctuation charac- ters as parts of words. set wordchars "characters" Specify which other characters (besides the normal alphanumeric ones) should be considered as parts of words. This overrides the option wordbounds. set zap Let an unmodified Backspace or Delete erase the marked region (in- stead of a single character, and without affecting the cutbuffer). SYNTAX HIGHLIGHTING Coloring the different syntactic elements of a file is done via regular expressions (see the color command below). This is inherently imper- fect, because regular expressions are not powerful enough to fully parse a file. Nevertheless, regular expressions can do a lot and are easy to make, so they are a good fit for a small editor like nano. All regular expressions in nano are POSIX extended regular expressions. This means that ., ?, *, +, ^, $, and several other characters are spe- cial. The period . matches any single character, ? means the preceding item is optional, * means the preceding item may be matched zero or more times, + means the preceding item must be matched one or more times, ^ matches the beginning of a line, and $ the end, \< matches the start of a word, and \> the end, and \s matches a blank. It also means that lookahead and lookbehind are not possible. A complete explanation can be found in the manual page of GNU grep: man grep. For each kind of file a separate syntax can be defined via the follow- ing commands: syntax name ["fileregex" ...] Start the definition of a syntax with this name. All subsequent color and other such commands will be added to this syntax, un- til a new syntax command is encountered. When nano is run, this syntax will be automatically activated if the current filename matches the extended regular expression fileregex. Or the syntax can be explicitly activated by using the -Y or --syntax command-line option followed by the name. The syntax default is special: it takes no fileregex, and ap- plies to files that don't match any syntax's regexes. The syn- tax none is reserved; specifying it on the command line is the same as not having a syntax at all. header "regex" ... If from all defined syntaxes no fileregex matched, then compare this regex (or regexes) against the first line of the current file, to determine whether this syntax should be used for it. magic "regex" ... If no fileregex matched and no header regex matched either, then compare this regex (or regexes) against the result of querying the magic database about the current file, to determine whether this syntax should be used for it. (This functionality only works when libmagic is installed on the system and will be silently ignored otherwise.) formatter program [argument ...] Run the given program on the full contents of the current buf- fer. (The current buffer is written out to a temporary file, the program is run on it, and then the temporary file is read back in, replacing the contents of the buffer.) linter program [argument ...] Use the given program to run a syntax check on the current buf- fer. comment "string" Use the given string for commenting and uncommenting lines. If the string contains a vertical bar or pipe character (|), this designates bracket-style comments; for example, "/*|*/" for CSS files. The characters before the pipe are prepended to the line and the characters after the pipe are appended at the end of the line. If no pipe character is present, the full string is prepended; for example, "#" for Python files. If empty double quotes are specified, the comment/uncomment function is dis- abled; for example, "" for JSON. The default value is "#". tabgives "string" Make the <Tab> key produce the given string. Useful for lan- guages like Python that want to see only spaces for indentation. This overrides the setting of the tabstospaces option. color fgcolor,bgcolor "regex" ... Paint all pieces of text that match the extended regular expres- sion regex with the given foreground and background colors, at least one of which must be specified. Valid color names are: white, black, blue, green, red, cyan, yellow, magenta, and nor- mal -- where normal means the default foreground or background color. You may use the prefix bright for the foreground color to get a stronger highlight. If your terminal supports trans- parency, not specifying a bgcolor tells nano to attempt to use a transparent background. All coloring commands are applied in the order in which they are specified, which means that later commands can recolor stuff that was colored earlier. icolor fgcolor,bgcolor "regex" ... Same as above, except that the matching is case insensitive. color fgcolor,bgcolor start="fromrx" end="torx" Paint all pieces of text whose start matches extended regular expression fromrx and whose end matches extended regular expres- sion torx with the given foreground and background colors, at least one of which must be specified. This means that, after an initial instance of fromrx, all text until the first instance of torx will be colored. This allows syntax highlighting to span multiple lines. icolor fgcolor,bgcolor start="fromrx" end="torx" Same as above, except that the matching is case insensitive. include "syntaxfile" Read in self-contained color syntaxes from syntaxfile. Note that syntaxfile may contain only the above commands, from syntax to icolor. extendsyntax name command argument ... Extend the syntax previously defined as name with another com- mand. This allows adding a new color, icolor, header, magic, formatter, linter, comment, or tabgives command to an already defined syntax -- useful when you want to slightly improve a syntax defined in one of the system-installed files (which nor- mally are not writable). REBINDING KEYS Key bindings can be changed via the following three commands: bind key function menu Rebinds the given key to the given function in the given menu (or in all menus where the function exists when all is used). bind key "string" menu Makes the given key produce the given string in the given menu (or in all menus where the key exists when all is used). The string can consist of text or commands or a mix of them. (To enter a command into the string, precede its keystroke with M-V.) unbind key menu Unbinds the given key from the given menu (or from all menus where the key exists when all is used). The format of key should be one of: ^X where X is a Latin letter, or one of several ASCII characters (@, ], \, ^, _), or the word "Space". Example: ^C. M-X where X is any ASCII character except [, or the word "Space". Example: M-8. Sh-M-X where X is a Latin letter. Example: Sh-M-U. By default, each Meta+letter keystroke does the same as the corresponding Shift+Meta+letter. But when any Shift+Meta bind is made, that will no longer be the case, for all letters. FN where N is a numeric value from 1 to 24. Example: F10. (Of- ten, F13 to F24 can be typed as F1 to F12 with Shift.) Ins or Del. Rebinding ^M (Enter) or ^I (Tab) is probably not a good idea. On some terminals it's not possible to rebind ^H (unless --raw is used) because its keycode is identical to that of the Backspace key. Valid function names to be bound are: help Invokes the help viewer. cancel Cancels the current command. exit Exits from the program (or from the help viewer or the file browser). writeout Writes the current buffer to disk, asking for a name. savefile Writes the current file to disk without prompting. insert Inserts a file into the current buffer (at the current cursor po- sition), or into a new buffer when option multibuffer is set. whereis Starts a forward search for text in the current buffer -- or for filenames matching a string in the current list in the file browser. wherewas Starts a backward search for text in the current buffer -- or for filenames matching a string in the current list in the file browser. findprevious Searches the next occurrence in the backward direction. findnext Searches the next occurrence in the forward direction. replace Interactively replaces text within the current buffer. cut Cuts and stores the current line (or the marked region). copy Copies the current line (or the marked region) without deleting it. paste Pastes the currently stored text into the current buffer at the current cursor position. zap Throws away the current line (or the marked region). (This func- tion is bound by default to <Meta+Delete>.) chopwordleft Deletes from the cursor position to the beginning of the preceding word. (This function is bound by default to <Shift+Ctrl+Delete>. If your terminal produces ^H for <Ctrl+Backspace>, you can make <Ctrl+Backspace> delete the word to the left of the cursor by re- binding ^H to this function.) chopwordright Deletes from the cursor position to the beginning of the next word. (This function is bound by default to <Ctrl+Delete>.) cutrestoffile Cuts all text from the cursor position till the end of the buffer. mark Sets the mark at the current position, to start selecting text. Or, when it is set, unsets the mark. curpos Shows the current cursor position: the line, column, and character positions. wordcount Counts the number of words, lines and characters in the current buffer. speller Invokes a spell-checking program, either the default hunspell or GNU spell, or the one defined by --speller or set speller. formatter Invokes a full-buffer-processing program (if the active syntax de- fines one). linter Invokes a syntax-checking program (if the active syntax defines one). justify Justifies the current paragraph. A paragraph is a group of con- tiguous lines that, apart from possibly the first line, all have the same indentation. The beginning of a paragraph is detected by either this lone line with a differing indentation or by a preced- ing blank line. fulljustify Justifies the entire current buffer. indent Indents (shifts to the right) the currently marked text. unindent Unindents (shifts to the left) the currently marked text. comment Comments or uncomments the current line or marked lines, using the comment style specified in the active syntax. complete Completes the fragment before the cursor to a full word found elsewhere in the current buffer. left Goes left one position (in the editor or browser). right Goes right one position (in the editor or browser). up Goes one line up (in the editor or browser). down Goes one line down (in the editor or browser). scrollup Scrolls the viewport up one row (meaning that the text slides down) while keeping the cursor in the same text position, if pos- sible. scrolldown Scrolls the viewport down one row (meaning that the text slides up) while keeping the cursor in the same text position, if possi- ble. prevword Moves the cursor to the beginning of the previous word. nextword Moves the cursor to the beginning of the next word. home Moves the cursor to the beginning of the current line. end Moves the cursor to the end of the current line. beginpara Moves the cursor to the beginning of the current paragraph. endpara Moves the cursor to the end of the current paragraph. prevblock Moves the cursor to the beginning of the current or preceding block of text. (Blocks are separated by one or more blank lines.) nextblock Moves the cursor to the beginning of the next block of text. pageup Goes up one screenful. pagedown Goes down one screenful. firstline Goes to the first line of the file. lastline Goes to the last line of the file. gotoline Goes to a specific line (and column if specified). Negative num- bers count from the end of the file (and end of the line). findbracket Moves the cursor to the bracket (brace, parenthesis, etc.) that matches (pairs) with the one under the cursor. prevbuf Switches to editing/viewing the previous buffer when multiple buf- fers are open. nextbuf Switches to editing/viewing the next buffer when multiple buffers are open. verbatim Inserts the next keystroke verbatim into the file. tab Inserts a tab at the current cursor location. enter Inserts a new line below the current one. delete Deletes the character under the cursor. backspace Deletes the character before the cursor. recordmacro Starts the recording of keystrokes -- the keystrokes are stored as a macro. When already recording, the recording is stopped. runmacro Replays the keystrokes of the last recorded macro. undo Undoes the last performed text action (add text, delete text, etc). redo Redoes the last undone action (i.e., it undoes an undo). refresh Refreshes the screen. suspend Suspends the editor (if the suspending function is enabled, see the "suspendenable" entry below). casesens Toggles whether searching/replacing ignores or respects the case of the given characters. regexp Toggles whether searching/replacing uses literal strings or regu- lar expressions. backwards Toggles whether searching/replacing goes forward or backward. older Retrieves the previous (earlier) entry at a prompt. newer Retrieves the next (later) entry at a prompt. flipreplace Toggles between searching for something and replacing something. flipgoto Toggles between searching for text and targeting a line number. flipexecute Toggles between inserting a file and executing a command. flippipe When executing a command, toggles whether the current buffer (or marked region) is piped to the command. flipnewbuffer Toggles between inserting into the current buffer and into a new empty buffer. flipconvert When reading in a file, toggles between converting and not con- verting it from DOS/Mac format. Converting is the default. dosformat When writing a file, switches to writing a DOS format (CR/LF). macformat When writing a file, switches to writing a Mac format. append When writing a file, appends to the end instead of overwriting. prepend When writing a file, 'prepends' (writes at the beginning) instead of overwriting. backup When writing a file, creates a backup of the current file. discardbuffer When about to write a file, discard the current buffer without saving. (This function is bound by default only when option --tempfile is in effect.) browser Starts the file browser, allowing to select a file from a list. gotodir Goes to a directory to be specified, allowing to browse anywhere in the filesystem. firstfile Goes to the first file when using the file browser (reading or writing files). lastfile Goes to the last file when using the file browser (reading or writing files). nohelp Toggles the presence of the two-line list of key bindings at the bottom of the screen. constantshow Toggles the constant display of the current line, column, and character positions. softwrap Toggles the displaying of overlong lines on multiple screen lines. linenumbers Toggles the display of line numbers in front of the text. whitespacedisplay Toggles the showing of whitespace. nosyntax Toggles syntax highlighting. smarthome Toggles the smartness of the Home key. autoindent Toggles whether a newly created line will contain the same amount of leading whitespace as the preceding line -- or as the next line if the preceding line is the beginning of a paragraph. cutfromcursor Toggles whether cutting text will cut the whole line or just from the current cursor position to the end of the line. nowrap Toggles whether long lines will be hard-wrapped to the next line. tabstospaces Toggles whether typed tabs will be converted to spaces. mouse Toggles mouse support. suspendenable Toggles whether the suspend sequence (normally ^Z) will suspend the editor window. Valid menu sections are: main The main editor window where text is entered and edited. search The search menu (AKA whereis). replace The 'search to replace' menu. replacewith The 'replace with' menu, which comes up after 'search to replace'. yesno The 'yesno' menu, where the Yes/No/All/Cancel question is asked. gotoline The 'goto line (and column)' menu. writeout The 'write file' menu. insert The 'insert file' menu. extcmd The menu for inserting output from an external command, reached from the insert menu. help The help-viewer menu. spell The menu of the integrated spell checker where the user can edit a misspelled word. linter The linter menu. browser The file browser for inserting or writing a file. whereisfile The 'search for a file' menu in the file browser. gotodir The 'go to directory' menu in the file browser. all A special name that encompasses all menus. For bind it means all menus where the specified function exists; for unbind it means all menus where the specified key exists. FILES /etc/nanorc System-wide configuration file. ~/.nanorc or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/nano/nanorc or ~/.config/nano/nanorc Per-user configuration file. SEE ALSO nano(1) February 2020 version 4.8 NANORC(5)
NAME | DESCRIPTION | NOTICE | OPTIONS | SYNTAX HIGHLIGHTING | REBINDING KEYS | FILES | SEE ALSO