Linux copy text to file

How to Cut, Copy and Paste Text in Nano editor?

While Nano is more beginner-friendly than Vim and Emacs, you still need to know the keyboard shortcuts for even the basic operations such as cut, copy and paste in Nano.

GNU Nano is an editor that has a minimal learning curve and hence is widely used for beginner-level guides.

That doesn’t mean that it is as easy to use for beginners as a graphical text editor. Why? because you still have to rely on the keyboard shortcuts to do the basic things such as save, undo, etc.

How about cut, copy and paste in Nano? Does it require specific keyboard shortcuts too?

Well, yes and no. You can use the mouse to copy-paste. There are also keyboard shortcuts for the same purpose. To cut, you must use shortcuts.

Let me show all this to you in detail.

Copy text in Nano

To copy a piece of text, the text needs to be selected first.

There are two ways to copy the text in Nano:

Using mouse to select, copy and paste

If you want a quick and dirty selection to copy text, there is no better way than using a mouse to do it.

Below are the steps you can follow:

Once the text is copied to clipboard, to paste text using mouse, make sure that you have moved the cursor to the location where you want to paste text.

Then, do a right click, and select «Paste» from the context menu that popped up.

This is what you should do to select, copy and paste text using mouse.

Using keyboard to select and copy (for pros)

Using a mouse to copy text is all good, but when you have to select text that extends the page, it gets frustrating. For that, you will need to use a few keyboard shortcuts.

Below are the steps to select and copy text using keyboard:

1. To select text, press the Ctrl + 6 key combination. You will see «Mark Set» appear at the bottom of the screen as an acknowledgement.
2. Now, use the arrow keys (keys like Home, End, Page Up and Page Down can also be used) to select/highlight text.
3. To copy selected text, press Alt + 6 key combination.

You now have the text copied to your clipboard!

Cut text in Nano

The cut operation is very similar to the copy operation, the only difference is that the data is deleted from one location to be moved to another location.

Unfortunately, cutting text cannot be done with the use of a mouse, so let’s go over the steps to follow if you want to cut text.

1. Select text using the Ctrl + 6 key combination.
2. Use the arrow keys to highlight the text you want to cut.
3. To cut the selected text, press Ctrl + K (think of it as Kutting text).

That is all there is to kutting text 😀

Paste in Nano

Finally, after copying or cutting the text, it won’t be much of a use if you can not paste text.

Thankfully, pasting text in nano is very easy. Follow the steps given below:

1. Move your cursor to the location where you want to paste text
2. Press Ctrl + U

Nano shows the keyboard shortcuts at the bottom of the screen all the time. So, even if you forgot it, you can always look at the bottom of the editor for hints or press Ctrl+G for help. If it says ^K for Cut, use Ctrl+K (^ means Ctrl key). Similarly, if it says M-A for Append, use Alt + M (M means Alt key).

Copy-paste between Nano and the system

If you want to copy text from a web browser or other editor into Nano, use the Ctrl+Shift+V to paste the text into Nano.

Similarly, if you want to copy some text from Nano to an external application, use Ctrl+Shift+C to copy the text and then the usual Ctrl+V to paste it.

When you use Ctrl+Shift+C/V keys, the text is copied into the system buffer and hence it can be used outside the Nano editor as well.

If you use the Nano specific keyboard shortcuts such as Ctrl+K etc, the text stays in Nano buffer. It cannot be accessed at the system level and hence you cannot use it outside Nano.

Conclusion

GNU Nano is a simple text editor that is known best for getting the job done without much fuss. This article covered the basics of copying, cutting and pasting text in Nano.

If you are interested in mastering the basics of Nano, try this free course on Nano.

Источник

How to Copy and Paste Text, Files and Folders in Linux Terminal

Copying and pasting is one of the most used actions on a computer. While it is easy to do so with the Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V keyboard shortcuts, on the Linux terminal it is not so straightforward. You have several options to get the job done. Here is how you can copy and paste text, files and directories in Linux terminal.

Content

Copy and Paste Text

If you just want to copy a piece of text in the terminal, all you need to do is highlight it with your mouse, then press Ctrl + Shift + C to copy.

To paste it where the cursor is, use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Shift + V .

The Paste shortcut also applies when you copy a section of text from a Word document (or any other application) and want to paste it in the terminal. For example, you can copy a command from a web page in your browser and use the Ctrl + Shift + V shortcut to paste it in the terminal.

If for some reason these keyboard shortcuts don’t work, the terminal might not be properly configured for it. Look for options that allow you to customize keyboard shortcuts. These are instructions for the most popular terminals:

• Gnome Terminal – Click the hamburger menu and click “Preferences.” Navigate to “Shortcuts” and scroll to “Edit.” The options for “Copy” and “Paste” will appear there ready to be configured.
• Konsole – Go to “Settings” and then click on “Configure Keyboard Shortcuts.” Search for “Copy,” configure it to use the key combos mentioned previously, then do the same for “Paste.”

Most other terminals will lock you into the default universal combination for copying/pasting in the console without the ability to configure them.

Copy and Paste a Single File

Any time you want to copy a file or folder in the Linux command line, the above keyboard shortcut won’t work. You have to use the cp command. cp is shorthand for copy. The syntax is simple, too. Use cp followed by the file you want to copy and the destination where you want it moved.

That, of course, assumes that your file is in the same directory you’re working out of. You can specify both.

cp ~/Downloads/your-file.txt ~/Documents/

You also have the option of renaming your file while copying it. Specify the new name in the destination.

cp ~/Downloads/your-file.txt ~/Documents/new-name.txt

Copy and Paste a Folder and Its Contents

In order to copy a folder and its contents, you’re going to need to tell the cp command to copy recursively. That’s simple enough with the -r flag.

cp -r ~/Downloads/pictures-directory ~/Pictures/family-vacation-pics

All the rest of your syntax is exactly the same. The -r flag serves to tell cp that it’s working with a directory and should copy its contents.

If you want the paste action to overwrite existing files, you can add the -f flag:

cp -rf ~/Downloads/pictures-directory ~/Pictures/family-vacation-pics

Copy and Paste Multiple Files

You can also copy multiple files. The Linux command line lets you target multiple items at once with brackets <> . You can use them to list the names of each file to be copied separated by commas.

cp ~/Downloads/{file1.txt,file2.jpg,file3.odt} ~/Documents/

All three files of differing file types will be copied to the Documents directory.

Copy and Paste All Files of the Same Type

If you have a ton of files of the same type to copy, you can use the wildcard character * . The asterisk/wildcard tells the Linux command line to accept absolutely anything in that place. So, if you tell Linux to copy *.jpg , it’ll copy all JPG files, regardless of the name or whatever comes before the .jpg part.

If you want to use multiple file types, say JPG and PNG, you can use the brackets from before.

cp ~/Downloads/*.{jpg,png} ~/Pictures/

Make Copying More Interactive

As you may have noticed while following this guide, using cp does not give you any sort of confirmation or prompt after finishing what it’s doing unless it encounters an error. This may cause a bit of discomfort especially when you’re doing very large file copy operations on slower hardware that could take a long time to complete.

By attaching the -v flag to your command, you tell cp to give you its most detailed output on what it does. The -i flag provides confirmation prompts so that you have a chance to cancel certain operations like overwriting certain files.

cp -rvi ~/Downloads/*.jpg ~/Pictures/

Generally the -v and -i flags are available in a large range of commands that are common to Linux.

Rsync vs CP

If you need to do several copy operations that overwrite files (such as creating a backup that you will update once in awhile) for some reason, rsync might just put a smile on your face.

rsync is a little more advanced in that it goes into the minutiae of each file, does a full comparison of the data in both, and within the file itself, only overwrites the data that has changed. This is especially useful if the destination folder is in an SSD, as it saves write cycles and doesn’t needlessly degrade the drive’s health by overwriting entire files.

Move a File or Folder

If you came here looking to move a file from one place to another without making a duplicate, you can do that easily too, but moving a file requires the mv command. The syntax is very similar to cp.

mv ~/Downloads/your-file.txt ~/Documents/

mv ~/Downloads/your-file.txt ~/Documents/renamed.txt

There is one major difference, though. You don’t need the -r flag to move a whole folder.

mv ~/Downloads/downloaded-folder ~/Pictures/vacation-pics

Frequently Asked Questions

Is rsync better than cp?

Neither is better than the other generally. rsync will make full comparisons of files in both the source and destination folders, taking up some computing resources to save on bandwidth or write cycles. It’s great if you’re constantly updating a backup of a particular folder, but less than ideal if you’re just doing a single copy operation.

cp functions more as a Swiss Army knife that just wants to get the job done. If you have to overwrite something, cp does it for you. Because of its capability for interactivity, it’s also more beginner-friendly and gives you a bit more control over the copying process.

Why can’t I just use Ctrl+C to copy items from my terminal?

In Linux terminal applications, pressing Ctrl + C on your keyboard sends a SIGINT (interrupt) signal to the kernel. It’s a simple way of telling Linux to stop whatever is running on that particular terminal.

If you configure the “Copy” function in your terminal to respond to that key combination, you will encounter problems when copying a line of text from an executing command while it’s still in the process of doing something.

Image credit: Neron Photos on Pexels

Miguel has been a business growth and technology expert for more than a decade and has written software for even longer. From his little castle in Romania, he presents cold and analytical perspectives to things that affect the tech world.

Our latest tutorials delivered straight to your inbox

Источник

How can I copy the content of a text file and paste it to another starting at a certain line?

I need to copy the content of a text file and paste it to another text file. The first text file has 10 lines of data and I need them to be copied to the second text file starting at line number 5 (for example). So in the second text file those data should written from line 5 to line 14. How can this be done? Thanks in advance. Consider me as a rookie regarding Linux.

3 Answers 3

The easiest tool here might be sed . To insert b.txt into a.txt after the 5th line , you could write:

sed reads the file specifiied as argument ( a.txt ) line by line. All lines get reproduced in the output just as they appeared in the input, unless they get altered by a command.

The 5 is an address (line number) at which the following command shall be executed. The command we use is r , which takes a file name as argument (here b.txt ), reads it completely and inserts it into the output after the current line.

As it stands above, this sed command line will only print the output to the terminal, without writing to any files. You can either redirect it to a new file (not any of the input files!) using Bash’s output redirection:

Or you can directly modify the outer input file a.txt by using sed ‘s -i (for «in-place») switch. If you write it as -i.bak , it will make a backup copy of the original input file with the suffix .bak first:

$ cat a.txt January February March April May October November December $ cat b.txt June July August September $ sed '5r b.txt' a.txt January February March April May June July August September October November December 

Источник