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NANORC(5) File Formats Manual NANORC(5)

NAME

nanorc - GNU nano's configuration file

DESCRIPTION

The nanorc file contains the default settings for nano, a small and friendly editor. The file should be in Unix format, not in DOS or Mac format. During startup, nano will first read the system-wide settings, from /etc/nanorc (the exact path might be different on your system), and then the user-specific settings, either from ~/.nanorc or from $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/nano/nanorc or from ~/.config/nano/nanorc, whichever is encountered first.

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.

Options in nanorc files take precedence over nano's defaults, and command-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 unset.

Below, the string parameters need to be enclosed in double quotes. Quotes inside these string parameters don't have to be escaped with backslashes. The last double quote in the string will be treated as its end. For example, for the brackets option, ""')>]}" will match ", ', ), >, ], and }.

The supported commands and arguments are:

Make Ctrl+Right stop at word ends instead of beginnings.
When backing up files, allow the backup to succeed even if its permissions can't be (re)set due to special OS considerations. You should NOT enable this option unless you are sure you need it.
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.
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 previous line is the beginning of a paragraph).
When saving a file, create a backup file by adding a tilde (~) to the file's name.
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.
Obsolete option. Recognized but ignored. ^Q is available to start a backward search.
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 the characters treated as closing brackets when justifying paragraphs. This may not include blank characters. Only closing punctuation (see set punct), optionally followed by the specified closing brackets, can end sentences. The default value is ""')>]}".
Do case-sensitive searches by default.
Constantly display the cursor position in the status bar. This overrides the option quickblank.
Use cut-from-cursor-to-end-of-line by default, instead of cutting the whole line. (The old form of this option, 'set cut', is deprecated.)
Use this color combination for the status bar when an error message is displayed. See set titlecolor for valid color names.
Hard-wrap lines at column number number. If number is 0 or less, the maximum line length will be the screen width less number columns. The default value is -8. This option conflicts with nowrap -- the last one given takes effect.
Specify the color combination to use for the function descriptions in the two help lines at the bottom of the screen. See set titlecolor for more details.
Save the last hundred search strings and replacement strings and executed commands, so they can be easily reused in later sessions.
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.
Display line numbers to the left of the text area.
Enable vim-style lock-files for when editing files.
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 "(<[{)>]}".
Use the blank line below the title bar as extra editing space.
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.
When reading in a file with ^R, insert it into a new buffer by default.
Don't convert files from DOS/Mac format.
Don't display the two help lines at the bottom of the screen.
When a file does not end with a newline, don't automatically add one.
Don't pause between warnings at startup. This means that only the last one will be visible (when there are multiple ones).
Don't hard-wrap text at all. This option conflicts with fill -- the last one given takes effect.
Specify the color combination to use for line numbers. See set titlecolor for more details.
nano will only read and write files inside directory and its subdirectories. Also, the current directory is changed to here, so files are inserted from this directory. By default, the operating directory feature is turned off.
Save the cursor position of files between editing sessions. The cursor position is remembered for the 200 most-recently edited files.
Preserve the XON and XOFF keys (^Q and ^S).
Set the characters treated as closing punctuation when justifying paragraphs. This may not include blank characters. Only the specfified closing punctuation, optionally followed by closing brackets (see brackets), can end sentences. The default value is "!.?".
Do quick status-bar blanking: status-bar messages will disappear after 1 keystroke instead of 25. The option constantshow overrides this.
Obsolete option. Recognized but ignored.
The email-quote string, used to justify email-quoted paragraphs. This is an extended regular expression. The default value is "^([ \t]*([#:>|}]|//))+". Note that \t stands for an actual Tab character.
Interpret the Delete key differently so that both Backspace and Delete work properly. You should only need to use this option if Backspace acts like Delete on your system.
Interpret the numeric keypad keys so that they all work properly. You should only need to use this option if they don't, as mouse support won't work properly with this option enabled.
Do extended regular expression searches by default.
Specify the color combination to use for selected text. See set titlecolor for more details.
Put the cursor on the highlighted item in the file browser, to aid braille users.
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 beginning of the line.
Use smooth scrolling by default.
Enable soft line wrapping for easier viewing of very long lines.
Use the given program to do spell checking and correcting, instead of the built-in corrector that calls spell.
Specify the color combination to use for the status bar. See set titlecolor for more details.
Allow nano to be suspended.
Use a tab size of number columns. The value of number must be greater than 0. The default value is 8.
Convert typed tabs to spaces.
Save automatically on exit, don't prompt.
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 foreground color may be prefixed with bright. And either "fgcolor" or ",bgcolor" may be left out.
Remove trailing whitespace from wrapped lines when automatic hard-wrapping occurs or when text is justified. (The old form of this option, 'set justifytrim', is deprecated.)
Save a file by default in Unix format. This overrides nano's default behavior of saving a file in the format that it had. (This option has no effect when you also use set noconvert.)
Disallow file modification.
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 ">.".
Detect word boundaries differently by treating punctuation characters as parts of words.
Specify which other characters (besides the normal alphanumeric ones) should be considered as parts of words. This overrides the option wordbounds.

SYNTAX HIGHLIGHTING

Coloring the different syntactic elements of a file is done via regular expressions (see the color command below). This is inherently imperfect, 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.

For each kind of file a separate syntax can be defined via the following commands:

Start the definition of a syntax with this name. All subsequent color and other such commands will be added to this syntax, until 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 applies to files that don't match any syntax's regexes. The syntax none is reserved; specifying it on the command line is the same as not having a syntax at all.

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.
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.)
Use the given program to run a syntax check on the current buffer. (This overrides the speller function.)
Use the given program to automatically reformat the text in the current buffer -- useful in a programming language like Go. (This overrides the speller and linter functions.)
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 disabled; for example, "" for JSON. The default value is "#".
Display all pieces of text that match the extended regular expression regex with foreground color fgcolor and background color bgcolor, at least one of which must be specified. Valid colors for foreground and background are: white, black, red, blue, green, yellow, magenta, and cyan. You may use the prefix "bright" to get a stronger color highlight for the foreground. If your terminal supports transparency, not specifying a bgcolor tells nano to attempt to use a transparent background.
Same as above, except that the matching is case insensitive.
Display all pieces of text whose start matches extended regular expression fromrx and whose end matches extended regular expression torx with foreground color fgcolor and background color bgcolor, 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.
Same as above, except that the matching is case insensitive.
Read in self-contained color syntaxes from syntaxfile. Note that syntaxfile may contain only the above commands, from syntax to icolor.
Extend the syntax previously defined as name with another command. This allows adding a new color, icolor, header, magic, comment, linter, or formatter command to an already defined syntax -- useful when you want to slightly improve a syntax defined in one of the system-installed files (which normally are not writable).

REBINDING KEYS

Key bindings can be changed via the following three commands:

Rebinds the key key to a new function named function in the context of menu menu (or in all menus where the function exists by using all).
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.)

Unbinds the key key from the menu named menu (or from all menus where it exists by using all).

^
followed by an alpha character or the word "Space". Example: ^C
followed by a printable character or the word "Space". Example: M-C
followed by a numeric value from 1 to 16. Example: F10

Invokes the help viewer.
Cancels the current command.
Exits from the program (or from the help viewer or the file browser).
Writes the current buffer to disk, asking for a name.
Writes the current file to disk without prompting.
Inserts a file into the current buffer (at the current cursor position), or into a new buffer when option multibuffer is set.
Starts a forward search for text in the current buffer -- or for filenames matching a string in the current list in the file browser.
Starts a backward search for text in the current buffer.
Repeats the last search command without prompting.
As searchagain, but always in the backward direction.
As searchagain, but always in the forward direction.
Interactively replaces text within the current buffer.
Cuts and stores the current line (or the marked region).
Copies the current line (or the marked region) without deleting it.
Copies the currently stored text into the current buffer at the current cursor position.
Sets the mark at the current position, to start selecting text.
Cuts from the cursor position to the beginning of the preceding word.
Cuts from the cursor position to the beginning of the next word.
Cuts all text from the cursor position till the end of the buffer.
Shows the current cursor position: the line, column, and character positions.
Counts the number of words, lines and characters in the current buffer.
Invokes a spell-checking program (or linting program, or formatter program, if the active syntax defines such a thing).
A synonym of speller (for when the speller has not been configured).
Justifies the current paragraph. A paragraph is a group of contiguous 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 preceding blank line.
Justifies the entire current buffer.
Indents (shifts to the right) the currently marked text.
Unindents (shifts to the left) the currently marked text.
Comments or uncomments the current line or marked lines, using the comment style specified in the active syntax.
Completes the fragment before the cursor to a full word found elsewhere in the current buffer.
Goes left one position (in the editor or browser).
Goes right one position (in the editor or browser).
Goes one line up (in the editor or browser).
Goes one line down (in the editor or browser).
Scrolls the viewport up one row (meaning that the text slides down) while keeping the cursor in the same text position, if possible.
Scrolls the viewport down one row (meaning that the text slides up) while keeping the cursor in the same text position, if possible.
Moves the cursor to the beginning of the previous word.
Moves the cursor to the beginning of the next word.
Moves the cursor to the beginning of the current line.
Moves the cursor to the end of the current line.
Moves the cursor to the beginning of the current paragraph.
Moves the cursor to the end of the current paragraph.
Moves the cursor to the beginning of the current or preceding block of text. (Blocks are separated by one or more blank lines.)
Moves the cursor to the beginning of the next block of text.
Goes up one screenful.
Goes down one screenful.
Goes to the first line of the file.
Goes to the last line of the file.
Goes to a specific line (and column if specified). Negative numbers count from the end of the file (and end of the line).
Moves the cursor to the bracket (brace, parenthesis, etc.) that matches (pairs) with the one under the cursor.
Switches to editing/viewing the previous buffer when multiple buffers are open.
Switches to editing/viewing the next buffer when multiple buffers are open.
Inserts the next keystroke verbatim into the file.
Inserts a tab at the current cursor location.
Inserts a new line below the current one.
Deletes the character under the cursor.
Deletes the character before the cursor.
Starts the recording of keystrokes -- the keystrokes are stored as a macro. When already recording, the recording is stopped.
Replays the keystrokes of the last recorded macro.
Undoes the last performed text action (add text, delete text, etc).
Redoes the last undone action (i.e., it undoes an undo).
Refreshes the screen.
Suspends the editor (if the suspending function is enabled, see the "suspendenable" entry below).
Toggles case sensitivity in searching (search/replace menus only).
Toggles whether searching/replacing is based on literal strings or regular expressions.
Toggles whether searching/replacing goes forward or backward.
Shows the previous history entry in the prompt menus (e.g. search).
Shows the next history entry in the prompt menus (e.g. search).
Toggles between searching for something and replacing something.
Toggles between searching for text and targeting a line number. (The form 'gototext' is deprecated.)
Toggles between inserting a file and executing a command.
When executing a command, toggles whether the current buffer (or marked region) is piped to the command.
Toggles between inserting into the current buffer and into a new empty buffer.
When writing a file, switches to writing a DOS format (CR/LF).
When writing a file, switches to writing a Mac format.
When writing a file, appends to the end instead of overwriting.
When writing a file, 'prepends' (writes at the beginning) instead of overwriting.
When writing a file, creates a backup of the current file.
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.)
Starts the file browser, allowing to select a file from a list.
Goes to a directory to be specified, allowing to browse anywhere in the filesystem.
Goes to the first file when using the file browser (reading or writing files).
Goes to the last file when using the file browser (reading or writing files).
Toggles the presence of the two-line list of key bindings at the bottom of the screen.
Toggles the constant display of the current line, column, and character positions. (The form 'constupdate' is deprecated.)
Toggles the presence of the blank line that 'separates' the title bar from the file text.
Toggles smooth scrolling (when moving around with the arrow keys).
Toggles the displaying of overlong lines on multiple screen lines.
Toggles the display of line numbers in front of the text.
Toggles the showing of whitespace.
Toggles syntax highlighting.
Toggles the smartness of the Home key.
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.
Toggles whether cutting text will cut the whole line or just from the current cursor position to the end of the line. (The form 'cuttoend' is deprecated.)
Toggles whether long lines will be hard-wrapped to the next line.
Toggles whether typed tabs will be converted to spaces.
Toggles whether a backup will be made of the file being edited.
Toggles whether a file is inserted into the current buffer or read into a new buffer.
Toggles mouse support.
Toggles automatic conversion of files from DOS/Mac format.
Toggles whether the suspend sequence (normally ^Z) will suspend the editor window.

The main editor window where text is entered and edited.
The search menu (AKA whereis).
The 'search to replace' menu.
The 'replace with' menu, which comes up after 'search to replace'.
The 'goto line (and column)' menu.
The 'write file' menu.
The 'insert file' menu.
The menu for inserting output from an external command, reached from the insert menu.
The help-viewer menu.
The interactive spell checker Yes/no menu.
The linter menu.
The file browser for inserting or writing a file.
The 'search for a file' menu in the file browser.
The 'go to directory' menu in the file browser.
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)

AUTHOR

Chris Allegretta and others (see the files AUTHORS and THANKS for details). This manual page was originally written by Jordi Mallach for the Debian system (but may be used by others).

version 2.9.8 June 2018