Pico (text editor)

Text editor for Unix and Unix-based computer systems

Pico

Developer(s)| University of Washington
Initial release| 1989
(36 years ago) (1989)
Written in| C
Operating system| Unix, Unix-like
Available in| English
Type| Text editor
License| Apache-2.0 (Alpine only)
Website| alpineapp.email
www.washington.edu/pine/ at the Wayback Machine (archived March 28, 2019)

Pico (Pine composer) is a text editor for Unix and Unix-like computer systems. It is integrated with Pine and Alpine, email clients initially designed by the Office of Computing and Communications at the University of Washington.[1]

From the Pine FAQ: "Pine's message composition editor is also available as a separate stand-alone program, called PICO. PICO is a very simple and easy-to-use text editor offering paragraph justification, cut/paste, and a spelling checker...".[2]

## Features

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Pico does not support working with several files simultaneously and cannot perform a find and replace across multiple files. It also cannot copy partial text from one file to another (though it is possible to read text into the editor from a whole file in its working directory). Pico does support search and replace operations.

By comparison, some popular Unix text editors such as vi and Emacs provide a wider range of features than Pico; including regular expression search and replace, and working with multiple files at the same time. By comparison, Pico's simplicity makes it suitable for beginners.[3]

## Basic commands and navigation

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Pico features a number of commands for editing. Arrow keys move the cursor a character at the time in the direction of the movement. Inserting a character is done by pressing the corresponding character key in the keyboard, while giving commands (such as save, spell check, justify, search, etc.) is done using a control key.

The `Ctrl`+`T` command is used to spell check. The speller is defined from the command line using the -s option. When a person writes files in different languages, the speller can be set to be a script that interacts with the user to select the language to be checked.

The `Ctrl`+`J` command is used to left justify text. Text is flowed in each line of a paragraph up to a limit set with the -r option in the command line. If no limit is given in the command line, then a default value of 72 characters per line is used. This limit is used to wrap lines during composition, as well as to justify text. The `Ctrl`+`J` command justifies the text in the paragraph that the cursor is placed on. The command `Ctrl`+`W` `Ctrl`+`U` is used to justify the full file. In case that justification is not done correctly, or by mistake, it can be undone by pressing the `Ctrl`+`U` command immediately after justification has been done.

The `Ctrl`+`W` command is used to search for text. Search is done case insensitively, The search and replace command is not available by default, but must be enabled through the -b option in the command line.

Moving inside the editor can be done using the keyboard by using the arrow keys. Keys such as `Page Up`, or `Page Down`, scroll the text up or down (towards the beginning or end of the file, respectively). The commands `Ctrl`+`W` `Ctrl`+`Y`, and `Ctrl`+`W` `Ctrl`+`V` move the cursor to the beginning or end of the file respectively, while the commands `Ctrl`+`A` and `Ctrl`+`E` move the cursor to the beginning and the end of the line that the cursor is located on.

## Derivatives

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A clone of Pico called nano, which is part of the GNU Project,[4] was developed because Pico's earlier license had unclear redistribution terms.[5] Newer versions of Pico as part of Alpine are released under the Apache License version 2.0.

## See also

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* Comparison of text editors
* List of text editors

## References

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1. ^ "Pine Project History". University of Washington. January 4, 2002. Archived from the original on December 25, 2018. Retrieved December 23, 2018.
2. ^ "2.2 What is PICO?". University of Washington. January 29, 2002. Archived from the original on August 5, 2018. Retrieved December 23, 2018.
3. ^ "PICO - the PIne COmposer - a simple editor". Guckes.net. Archived from the original on October 9, 2018. Retrieved December 23, 2018.
4. ^ "[Nano-devel] nano to remain in GNU". GNU Project. August 19, 2016. Archived from the original on August 4, 2017. Retrieved December 23, 2018.
5. ^ "GNU nano -- an enhanced clone of the Pico text editor". GNU nano. Archived from the original on December 24, 2018. Retrieved December 23, 2018.

## External links

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* Alpine website
* Pine website at the Wayback Machine (archived March 28, 2019)
* Pico user guide at the Wayback Machine (archived December 21, 2020)