Simple Console Editor for OS X Terminal I am looking for a simple console text editor for OS X to run in a terminal. I have used “Joe” for many years, and it’s very good, but I am looking for one that is simpler.

In particular I would prefer one that uses copy &amp; paste like modern text editors, and allows you to select text with the shift-arrow keys.

Windows has the built-in editor called “Edit”. Something like that would be nice.
There are a bunch of editors running in Terminal already installed by default. Some of them come with quite a learning curve though...


nano rather easy to use, onscreen help, limited functionality
emacs takes some time to get used to, start with the tutorial (type Ctrl-h t)
vi/vim takes some time to get used to as well, especially because it's a modal editor, start with the help document (type :help)


And of course there is also Textedit.app. Doesn't run in Terminal but is quite a versatile editor to get started.