Gfilui

I'm trying to save a file in the nano text editor. I wrote a short test text and entered ctrl+O to save and name the file but I'm not sure how I can save file to a specific folder? and how I can later find the file I created.
thanks!

Nano by default saves to the current working directory (CWD) or to the relative path from your CWD to the file that is open. If you want to save to another directory you just prepend the filename with the path

For example

Ctrl+O opens the save prompt

File Name to Write: ~/test.txt

Will save test.txt to my home directory

File Name to Write: ../test.txt

Will save test.txt to one directory above my CWD

File Name to Write: /absolute/path/to/file/text.txt

Will save text.txt in /absolute/path/to/file/ directory

After you save a file nano will be using that path in the buffer. To see that path Ctrl+O opens the save prompt with the new relative path Ctrl+C to cancel saving

While in the save prompt Ctrl+T opens a handy file browser you can use

If the specific folder already exists, there are several ways to do this. First, let’s assume that the folder is in your own user directory. We’ll tell nano that’s where we want to create the test file. From the terminal:

nano /home/<your_user_name>/<some_folder>/test.txt

Or, the more convenient:

nano ~/<some_folder>/test.txt

You can also first navigate to the location you want the file to reside:

cd ~/<some_folder>
nano test.txt

If the folder doesn’t yet exist, create it:

mkdir ~/<some_folder>
cd ~/<some_folder>
nano test.txt