Terminal User Guide
To edit a plain text file in Terminal, you can use a command-line text editor.
To open any file from the command line with the default application, just type open followed by the filename/path. Example: open /Desktop/filename.mp4 Edit: as per Johnny Drama's comment below, if you want to be able to open files in a certain application, put -a followed by the application's name in quotes between open and the file. Mac Snow Leopard makes it easy for you to create and edit your text files, such as word-processing files. Text files let you create and format documents that include text and photos and even embed music and video files for Web pages you build. Virtually every computer ever built can read and write in standard.
For general-purpose work, it’s easiest to use one of the text editors included with macOS. If you want to use a graphical text editor, use TextEdit (in Launchpad). Otherwise, use one of the command-line editors included with macOS:
Nano nano is a simple command-line editor. It’s a good introduction to using a command-line editor because it includes easy-to-follow on-screen help. See the nano man page.
Vim vim is a vi-compatible text editor. It has many powerful enhancements for moving around, searching, and editing documents. Basic editing is simple to learn, and there’s additional functionality to explore. You can access most of the functionality by using keystroke combinations that trigger certain behavior. vim, or the editor it’s modeled after, vi, is found in most UNIX-based operating systems. See the vim man page.
Textedit For Mac
If you’re new to using the command line and don’t anticipate using it much for editing, nano is probably your best choice. If you expect to spend a lot of time using the command-line environment, it’s probably worth learning vim. They have very different design philosophies, so spend some time with each of them to determine which works best for you.
Open Textedit Mac
In the Terminal app on your Mac, invoke a command-line editor by typing the name of the editor, followed by a space and then the name of the file you want to open. If you want to create a new file, type the editor name, followed by a space and the pathname of the file.
Here’s an example of using
nanoto open a new file named “myFile.conf” in your Documents folder: