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Getting a text editor

Whatever you do, you're going to want a good text editor. There are many choices -

You also get other text editors around - for if you edit a text or markdown file inside Jupyter Lab, that's a text editor, similarly Rstudio has its own editor.

Installing Visual Studio Code​

If you are on Windows in particular you will almost certainly want Visual Studio Code installed, in particular because it is set up to work well with your Windows Subsystem for Linux system. It works like this:

  1. visit the (Visual Studio Code website)[https://code.visualstudio.com], download and install it.
  2. Start Visual Studio Code and enter the extensions manager (one of the icons on the left).
  3. Search for 'WSL' and click on the 'WSL' extension and install it.

At this point something neat happens: you'll see an extra icon called 'Remote Explorer' appear in the icon tray on the left. Click it and you'll see a folder called 'Ubuntu' with your home folder inside. This is now pointing at your UNIX home folder, and it gives you a seamless way to edit files that work with your UNIX command-line.

Going the other way is also easy: start your UNIX terminal and find a file or fodler you'd like to edit. For example we could make one like this

echo 'This is a test file' > test.txt

You can now edit the file in VS Code like so:

code ./text.txt

VS Code should magically appear and open your file.

tip

You can also 'open' a whole folder:

code ./

which is usually nicer, as it gives you a file explorer on the left where you can pick what you want to edit.

Running a terminal in VS Code​

It's also possible to get your UNIX terminal directly in VS Code. From the window above, go to the Terminal menu and choose 'New Terminal'. The window that opens is a UNIX terminal pointing at the same folder as your file.