Fixing Nano on Ubuntu
Mar 10, 2007One of the minor annoyances I noticed when working in my Ubuntu install on Slicehost over SSH was that my delete/backspace key in nano was doing a delete instead of backspace. Basically the cursor was staying put and deleting one space to the right, instead of backspacing one space to the left. It’s a minor annoyance, but I spend enough time using nano to make quick fixes to config files that I needed to fix it.
A quick glance through the nanorc file in /etc allowed me to fix it.
Change this line:
# set rebinddelete
To this:
set rebinddelete
Problem solved, the delete key should behave normally now in nano. There are a lot of other options you can enable in the nanorc file, so take some time to read through it. I lowed the default tab size and had it automatically convert tabs to spaces.