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In nano, I can search for text in my document using Ctrl W, and I can bring up the Help screen using Ctrl G, but I can't search the Help screen using Ctrl W.

Is there any other way to do it?

mwfearnley
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    There's a feature request for it at https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?28994 - the solution sadly isn't as trivial as one might imagine.. – mwfearnley Jul 08 '16 at 08:24

2 Answers2

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This has recently been added in nano 2.8.2 - from the changelog:

2017 May 4

GNU nano 2.8.2 "Krats" adds another new feature: it makes the ^G help texts searchable with ^W.

Both Ctrl+W (Where Is) and Alt+W (WhereIs Next) work. It puts a flashing cursor on the screen at the found text.

mwfearnley
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No, Because they didn't implement a function to do that. They might have thought that Help page is not an editor and is much shorter than many of the editors' manual pages and hence doesn't require search functionality.

Though You can use these in Help page

  • Ctrl-P - Previous Line
  • Ctrl-N - Next Line
  • Ctrl-Y - Previous Page
  • Ctrl-V - Next Page
  • Alt-\ (Backward Slash) - First Line
  • Alt-/ (Forward Slash) - Last Line
Anwar
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    Thanks. I would disagree, and say that plenty of things that aren't editors, such as web browsers and man pages, require search functionality. But on the other hand it's probably true that, because the Help page is not actually an editor, the existing search functionality cannot trivially be adapted to work in it. – mwfearnley Aug 16 '16 at 13:23
  • Actually nano's help page is much shorter, may be that's why they exclude that functionality. I'm removing the agree part from the answer though – Anwar Aug 16 '16 at 13:25
  • There's still over 100 lines of text in it, I just tried, and found 5 full pages of text in an 80x25 terminal window. That's probably about 100 lines, most of which is a list of shortcuts. – mwfearnley Aug 16 '16 at 13:32