How to insert line break + taboolation in a Nano text editor?

Question

Replace <br> with a line break in Nano. Tried to Atom - dies. I Inserted \n, \r, \n\r but, inserted simply as characters. How do I insert a line break + taboolation? File is .Html.

Example:

Hello<br>Hello<br>Hello

Result:

Hello
   Hello
   Hello

Answer 1

You need to use something like vim instead of nano.

Open the file using vim and press esc and then type:

:s/<br>/\r\t/g

and then press enter

To save the file and exit, run the following sequence of keys which will write the file (save) and quit vim:

press esc and then type:

:wq

and then press enter

Click here to view a related question which explains why this cannot be done using nano.

---

Alternatively, you could use sed to edit the file.

Here is an example:

I will use the example filename "HELLO":

sed -i 's/<br>/\n\t/g' HELLO

Furthermore, if you want to create a file instead, you can run the following command to create the file by piping the output of sed to a file using tee:

echo 'Hello<br>Hello<br>Hello' | sed 's/<br>/\n\t/g' | tee HELLO