nano: Settings
8.1 Settings
============
The supported settings in a nanorc file are:
‘set afterends’
Make ‘Ctrl+Right’ and ‘Ctrl+Delete’ stop at word ends instead of
beginnings.
‘set allow_insecure_backup’
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.
‘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
previous line is the beginning of a paragraph).
‘set backup’
When saving a file, back up the previous version of it, using the
current filename suffixed with a tilde (‘~’).
‘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
is overridden by setting the options ‘titlecolor’, ‘statuscolor’,
‘keycolor’, ‘functioncolor’, ‘numbercolor’, and/or ‘selectedcolor’.
‘set bookstyle’
When justifying, treat any line that starts with whitespace as the
beginning of a paragraph (unless auto-indenting is on).
‘set brackets "CHARACTERS"’
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
""')>]}".
‘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 on the status bar. Note
that this overrides ‘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 [bold,][italic,]FGCOLOR,BGCOLOR’
Use this color combination for the status bar when an error message
is displayed. The default value is bold,white,red. ⇒set
keycolor 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 [bold,][italic,]FGCOLOR,BGCOLOR’
Use this color combination for the concise function descriptions in
the two help lines at the bottom of the screen. ⇒set
keycolor for valid color names.
‘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
executed commands, so they can be easily reused in later sessions.
‘set indicator’
Display a "scrollbar" on the righthand side of the edit window. It
shows the position of the viewport in the buffer and how much of
the buffer is covered by the viewport.
‘set jumpyscrolling’
Scroll the buffer contents per half-screen instead of per line.
‘set keycolor [bold,][italic,]FGCOLOR,BGCOLOR’
Use this color combination for the shortcut key combos in the two
help lines at the bottom of the screen. Valid names for the
foreground and background colors are: ‘red’, ‘green’, ‘blue’,
‘magenta’, ‘yellow’, ‘cyan’, ‘white’, and ‘black’. Each of these
eight names may be prefixed with the word ‘light’ to get a brighter
version of that color. The word ‘grey’ or ‘gray’ may be used as a
synonym for ‘lightblack’.
On terminal emulators that can do at least 256 colors, other valid
(but unprefixable) color names are: ‘pink’, ‘purple’, ‘mauve’,
‘lagoon’, ‘mint’, ‘lime’, ‘peach’, ‘orange’, ‘latte’, ‘rosy’,
‘beet’, ‘plum’, ‘sea’, ‘sky’, ‘slate’, ‘teal’, ‘sage’, ‘brown’,
‘ocher’, ‘sand’, ‘tawny’, ‘brick’, ‘crimson’, and ‘normal’ — where
‘normal’ means the default foreground or background color. On such
emulators, the color may also be specified as a three-digit
hexadecimal number prefixed with ‘#’, with the digits representing
the amounts of red, green, and blue, respectively. This tells
‘nano’ to select from the available palette the color that
approximates the given values.
Either FGCOLOR or ,BGCOLOR may be left out, and the pair may be
preceded by ‘bold’ and/or ‘italic’ (separated by commas) to get a
bold and/or slanting typeface, if your terminal can do those.
‘set linenumbers’
Display line numbers to the left of the text area. (Any line with
an anchor additionally gets a mark in the margin.)
‘set locking’
Enable vim-style lock-files for when editing files.
‘set magic’
When neither the file’s name nor its first line give a clue, try
using libmagic to determine the applicable syntax. (Calling
libmagic can be relatively time consuming. It is therefore not
done by default.)
‘set matchbrackets "CHARACTERS"’
Specify 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 minibar’
Suppress the title bar and instead show information about the
current buffer at the bottom of the screen, in the space for the
status bar. In this "minibar" the filename is shown on the left,
followed by an asterisk if the buffer has been modified. On the
right are displayed the current line and column number, the code of
the character under the cursor (in Unicode format: U+xxxx), the
same flags as are shown by ‘set stateflags’, and a percentage that
expresses how far the cursor is into the file (linewise). When a
file is loaded or saved, and also when switching between buffers,
the number of lines in the buffer is displayed after the filename.
This number is cleared upon the next keystroke, or replaced with an
[i/n] counter when multiple buffers are open. The line plus column
numbers and the character code are displayed only when ‘set
constantshow’ is used, and can be toggled on and off with ‘M-C’.
The state flags are displayed only when ‘set stateflags’ is used.
‘set minicolor [bold,][italic,]FGCOLOR,BGCOLOR’
Use this color combination for the minibar. (When this option is
not specified, the colors of the title bar are used.) ⇒set
keycolor for valid color names.
‘set mouse’
Enable mouse support, so that mouse clicks can be used to place the
cursor, set the mark (with a double click), or execute shortcuts.
‘set multibuffer’
When reading in a file with ‘^R’, insert it into a new buffer by
default.
‘set noconvert’
Don’t convert files from DOS/Mac format.
‘set nohelp’
Don’t display the help lists 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 nowrap’
Deprecated option since it has become the default setting. When
needed, use ‘unset breaklonglines’ instead.
‘set numbercolor [bold,][italic,]FGCOLOR,BGCOLOR’
Use this color combination for line numbers. ⇒set keycolor
for valid color names.
‘set operatingdir "DIRECTORY"’
‘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.
‘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 promptcolor [bold,][italic,]FGCOLOR,BGCOLOR’
Use this color combination for the prompt bar. (When this option
is not specified, the colors of the title bar are used.) ⇒set
keycolor for valid color names.
‘set punct "CHARACTERS"’
Set the characters treated as closing punctuation when justifying
paragraphs. This may not include blank characters. Only the
specified closing punctuation, optionally followed by closing
brackets (see ‘set brackets’), can end sentences. The default
value is "!.?".
‘set quickblank’
Make status-bar messages disappear after 1 keystroke instead of
after 20. Note that option ‘constantshow’ overrides this. When
option ‘minibar’ or ‘zero’ is in effect, ‘quickblank’ makes a
message disappear after 0.8 seconds instead of after the default
1.5 seconds.
‘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 a literal Tab character.) This makes it possible to
rejustify 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 some keys to work
properly, it means that the terminfo terminal description that is
used does not fully match the actual behavior of your terminal.
This can happen when you ssh into a BSD machine, for example.)
Using this option disables ‘nano’’s mouse support.
‘set rebinddelete’
Interpret the ‘Delete’ and ‘Backspace’ keys differently so that
both 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 saveonexit’
Save a changed buffer automatically on exit (‘^X’); don’t prompt.
(The old form of this option, ‘set tempfile’, is deprecated.)
‘set scrollercolor FGCOLOR,BGCOLOR’
Use this color combination for the indicator alias "scrollbar".
(On terminal emulators that link to a libvte older than version
0.55, using a background color here does not work correctly.)
⇒set keycolor for valid color names.
‘set selectedcolor [bold,][italic,]FGCOLOR,BGCOLOR’
Use this color combination for selected text. ⇒set keycolor
for valid color names.
‘set showcursor’
Put the cursor on the highlighted item in the file browser, and
show the cursor in the help viewer, to aid braille users and people
with poor vision.
‘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
beginning of the line.
‘set softwrap’
Display lines that exceed the screen’s width over multiple screen
lines. (You can make this soft-wrapping occur at whitespace
instead of rudely at the screen’s edge, by using also ‘set
atblanks’.)
‘set speller "PROGRAM [ARGUMENT ...]"’
Use the given program to do spell checking and correcting. ⇒
--speller for details.
‘set spotlightcolor [bold,][italic,]FGCOLOR,BGCOLOR’
Use this color combination for highlighting a search match. The
default value is black,lightyellow. ⇒set keycolor for valid
color names.
‘set stateflags’
Use the top-right corner of the screen for showing some state
flags: ‘I’ when auto-indenting, ‘M’ when the mark is on, ‘L’ when
hard-wrapping (breaking long lines), ‘R’ when recording a macro,
and ‘S’ when soft-wrapping. When the buffer is modified, a star
(‘*’) is shown after the filename in the center of the title bar.
‘set statuscolor [bold,][italic,]FGCOLOR,BGCOLOR’
Use this color combination for the status bar. ⇒set
keycolor for valid color names.
‘set stripecolor [bold,][italic,]FGCOLOR,BGCOLOR’
Use this color combination for the vertical guiding stripe. ⇒
set keycolor for valid color names.
‘set suspendable’
Obsolete option; ignored. Suspension is enabled by default,
reachable via ‘^T^Z’. (If you want a plain ‘^Z’ to suspend nano,
add ‘bind ^Z suspend main’ to your nanorc.)
‘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 each typed tab to spaces — to the number of spaces that a
tab at that position would take up.
‘set titlecolor [bold,][italic,]FGCOLOR,BGCOLOR’
Use this color combination for the title bar. ⇒set keycolor
for valid color names.
‘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
default behavior of saving a file in the format that it had. (This
option has no effect when you also use ‘set noconvert’.)
‘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
characters as part of a word.
‘set wordchars "CHARACTERS"’
Specify which other characters (besides the normal alphanumeric
ones) should be considered as parts of words. When using this
option, you probably want to unset ‘wordbounds’.
‘set zap’
Let an unmodified ‘Backspace’ or ‘Delete’ erase the marked region
(instead of a single character, and without affecting the
cutbuffer).
‘set zero’
Hide all elements of the interface (title bar, status bar, and help
lines) and use all rows of the terminal for showing the contents of
the buffer. The status bar appears only when there is a
significant message, and disappears after 1.5 seconds or upon the
next keystroke. With ‘M-Z’ the title bar plus status bar can be
toggled. With ‘M-X’ the help lines.
Info Catalog
nano: Nanorc Files
nano: Syntax Highlighting