The cursor will flash at the top of an empty screen awaiting the entry of text. Just start entering your text. When finished with the text, press ^x . The program will prompt you about saving the modified buffer, respond by entering y. Pico will check with you about the name of the file. If you still want to keep the name listed there, just press the RETURN key and the file will be saved under the original file name.

Pico reacts differently with a file that already exists. For an existing file, it will tell you the number of lines contained in the file at the bottom of the screen. The cursor will be on the first line of your text waiting to be moved throughout the text to make modifications.

Use the cursor control keys or global movement keys to move through the text, and change it as you need or just enter more text. Not saving the modified buffer will leave the file as it was originally just in case you want to abort a disastrous editing session.