PICO Short Manual (print landscape) - "When using PICO, you can always look at the bottom of the screen to see if the command you are looking for is listed."
How to use Pico to edit a file
In order to type your C++ or any other programs or text, you will use an text editor. There are several editors that one can use on a UNIX machine. The most common ones are vi, pico, emacs, and nedit. Perhaps the most powerful of these four is vi. One needs some practice to become comfortable with vi. For now, we will learn pico. Pico is simpler to learn than vi and it does most of the basic things we may need in an editor. There is an excellent reference for pico at: http://www.usd.edu/trio/tut/pico/. 

Suppose, you want to edit a file that is called template.C. In order to open that file, you will type: % pico template.C 

This file could be a new file or an existing file. When the file is a new file, you will get a blank screen and when it is an existing file, the contents of that file will be displayed. For now, we assume that is a new file.  Upon execution of the above command, you will get a screen similar to the one shown below. 
The bottom two lines of the screen contain some of the more common commands available. Practice typing a few lines, then save your work by pressing ^X (which means <Ctrl-X>).The symbol ^ means use the Ctrl key. You'll need to confirm the save by pressing 'Y'; typing 'N' will discard changes made to the file. 
Table (1) shows some of the commands available in Pico (alternative keyboard commands are in parentheses). ^G is for help, then ^v is to go to the second page.
Table (2) shows some more editing commands available in Pico.

Note: If you wish to go to a particular line number from the command prompt, use:
% pico  +LineNumber   FileName
Table (1) - Moving around in Pico 
Command Short Description
^F (right arrow) move forward a character
^B (left arrow) Move back a character
^P (up arrow) Move up one line
^N (down arrow) move down one line
^A move to the beginning of the current line
^E move to the end of the current line
^V (F8) move forward one screen of text
^Y (F7) move backward one screen of text
 Table (2) - Editing in Pico
Command Short description
^^ mark position as beginning of select text
^K (F9) selected text ends on the left side of the current cursor position beginning must be marked already cut selected text (inversed text) if nothing selected this will cut the current line of text
^U (F10) uncut or paste last cut text inserting at current cursor position
^J justify the current paragraph
^I (Tab) insert a tab at current position
^T  spelling checker
^C  print current cursor position (current line number)
^W (F6) search for text - neglecting case
^L redraw screen
^G (F1)  display the help text from within Pico