Maybe with 25 lines the 3 lines are annoying, but I usually have more lines than that and the 3 lines with quick reference are much better than having to google the command I forgot, because I use it rarely.
As for the search, what do you mean?
^G Get Help ^O WriteOut ^R Read File ^Y Prev Page ^K Cut Text ^C Cur Pos
^X Exit ^J Justify ^W Where Is ^V Next Page ^U UnCut Text ^T To Spell
Ctrl+W is search (I admit the choice of the combination is not that great, because doing it inside a browser (say, using IPMI or VM console) closes the browser tab).
Anyway, pressing that you get:
Search:
^G Get Help ^Y First Line ^T Go To Line ^W Beg of Par M-J FullJstify M-B Backwards
^C Cancel ^V Last Line ^R Replace ^O End of Par M-C Case Sens M-R Regexp
nano: Ctrl+W, Ctrl+V
On GUI editors, I move the scroll bar with my mouse.
nano:
Ctrl+W, Ctrl+T, “42”, enter
nano:
Ctrl+W, “Wolf”, enter
nano: entire file: Ctrl+W, Ctrl+R, “sheep”, enter,“wolf”,enter,a
For partial replacements, do this:
Ctrl+W, Ctrl+R, “sheep”, enter,“wolf”,enter
a match is selected, if I want to replace it, I press y and if I want to skip it I press n
Ctrl+W, “storage.path:” OR “/mnt/storagenode” (whichever I remember, whichever is easiest), enter. This puts me on the relevant line. I can then edit it the way I want.
If I want to delete everything from the cursor to the end of the line (and the line is very long) I usually do this:
move cursor to the first unwanted character, enter, Ctrl+K.
Ctrl+K cuts the entire line, so this moves the unwanted portion to a new line, then cuts that line.
To each his own, for me, using the mouse to select a portion of the text is much easier and faster than trying to count the number of words I need to select etc.
Let’s say I have to think for a minute to come up with what I want to change in the file. Then, using nano, it takes me 5 seconds to change it, but if I used vim, I could do that in 2 seconds. The total time is 65 vs 62 seconds, which is not a significant difference. This is what I meant.
I know, the problem is that I do not need to use it often, which means I forget. Even if I googled all the functions and was able to write the correct single invocation, then next time I would need it, I would have to google it again, because that next time would be in a month or later.
Actually, this is similar with PHP (and in some cases bash). I have written some php scripts that access a mysql database, but pretty much every time I need to write a new one, I either have to google how to access a database from php or I copy paste from one of my old scripts. This is because I need it once in a few months and the few months are enough for me to forget the specifics. Similar with, say, bash. I use the date command quite frequently, and yet, pretty much every time I need it, I read the help to remember the format (other than “%s”, I remember that one).
This is probably the main reason why I like the simpler things (ones that require less memory) - even if I did learn the useful vim commands, by the next time I would need them, I would have to google them again. The 2 “wasted” lines of nano are extremely useful in this case for me.
The worst part of that is not just the requirement for “neat” code (I still somewhat dislike php and C because the variable and function names are case sensitive, Pascal/Delphi do not have that particular annoyance), but that the code may look OK, but not work (or run). The reason? One line is “space space space space” and another line is “tab space”. The indentations look exactly the same, but the code does not work.