What text editor to use while ssh using mac terminal [closed]

Question

I am using my Mac Terminal to SSH into my GoDaddy hosting account.

I was wondering what text editor I could use through Terminal? I am not familiar with VIM or emacs at all so it's hard for me to use.

I've used gedit on Linux and quite like it. I wonder if I could install gedit on the Godaddy server?

Any advice would be appreciated. I am very new to working with SSH and the terminal.

Answer 1

There are lots of full-screen text editors, but if you want to edit files locally on your Mac and while ssh'd into a remote server without having to think about it, you really have to learn one of the ubiquitous editors.

In fact, ideally you should learn the basics of all three—at least how to get out safely—because at some point, you're going to accidentally visudo with VISUAL unset or set wrong and find yourself in the wrong editor.

• nano (and its relatives in the pico family) is by far the easiest to learn if you're coming from a TextEdit/TeachText/Notepad background. However, it's the least ubiquitous, and the least efficient with both keystrokes and screen real estate, and real Unix geeks will laugh at you if they ask "vi or emacs" and you say "nano".

• vi (and its relatives—in fact, usually you're using vim, not vi) is the most ubiquitous, and by far the most efficient for quick and simple edits. It's also much more usable from bizarre terminals like your favorite iPad ssh client (where hitting ^X is a major chore). And ultimately, most vi key sequences also work with ed and sometimes even sed, which is really handy when you're stuck on a terminal with full-screen support at all. However, it is by far the hardest to learn when you've coming from a GUI background—the idea that you can't enter or edit text in your text editor except by entering special modes is just weird.

• emacs (and its relatives and simplified clones, like jove and ue) is the most efficient for doing complex operations. It's also nice that its weirder keystrokes (like ^A-F for cursor movement) are the same as the Terminal command line, libreadline, native Mac GUI text controls, and Firefox text controls. And if you really learn emacs, you can start using Aquamacs in the GUI, and programming it to automate all your tedious text editing, and so on. The only problem is that really learning emacs will take you years, and you might have other things to do with your life.