How to copy and paste lines in Nano on OSX

Question

I would like to copy and paste multiple lines in the command line text editor nano on OSX Mountain Lion 10.8.5

Alt-6 and Ctrl-U do not work as on other platforms.

score 10 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 22 '17 at 00:55

10

The problem is that in Mac Terminal, the alt key doesn't work unless you change the Terminal Preferences to enable Use Option as Meta key. Then alt+6 will work properly to copy.

Another choice is to use the ESC key instead of alt. So do ESC+6.

answered Apr 22 '17 at 00:55

wisbucky

5,165

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 16 '13 at 15:19

4

You may be able to cut multiple lines into a buffer using Ctrl-K, and paste them back in using Ctrl-U.

Note that this does not copy the text onto your OS X clipboard, but uses a buffer inside of nano (or the shell?) to perform the actions.

answered Nov 16 '13 at 15:19

Eddie Kelley

3,278

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 24 '19 at 08:54

1

If you'd like to paste text from clipboard just use Cmd + V - works well

answered Nov 24 '19 at 08:54

Alexey Mironov

29

Welcome to Ask Different! That works for current versions of macOS, would it work for OS X Lion as requested by the OP? – Glorfindel Nov 24 '19 at 09:06
My macOS version is Catalina – Alexey Mironov Jun 04 '20 at 16:03

score 0 · Answer 4 · edited Mar 23 '22 at 14:52

0

In my case my clipboard was getting bracketed.

Typing reset in the terminal window (or Cmd+R) fixed my issue and allowed me to paste in nano with Cmd+V as usual.

edited Mar 23 '22 at 14:52

agarza

2,274

answered Mar 23 '22 at 12:59

LeanderJCC

1

How to copy and paste lines in Nano on OSX

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