Emacs is one of the oldest and most versatile text editors available for
UNIX-based systems. It's been around for a long time (more than twenty years
for GNU emacs) and is well known for its powerful and rich editing features.
Emacs is also more than just a text editor; it can be customized and
extended with different "modes", enabling it to be used like an
Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for programming languages
like Java, C or Python.
For those who have used both the ubiquitous vi and the user-friendly nano,
emacs would come as an interesting cross-between. Its strengths and features
would resemble those of vi while its menus, help files and easy-to-remember
command-keys would compare with nano.
In this article, we will see how we can install emacs
in a Linux system and use it for basic text editing. Emacs
is also available for graphical window managers for Linux like
GNOME; however we will only cover the "text based" version here.
running the following command:
emacs
else:
install emacs
Open a file, or create it like this:
emacs file1.txt
Follow the simple manual that will be open.