Recipe 6.15. Setting Your Default Editor
6.15.1 Problem
By now, you're
totally sold on Vim and JOE. But some programs, such as
crontab and quota, require
use of the default editor, and the editor you get by default is some
creaky old monster. How do you set the default editor to something
you like?
6.15.2 Solution
Edit your environment variables, in ~/.bashrc or
~/.bash_profile. ~/.bashrc
is preferable, because it applies to all shells opened during a
session. ~/.bash_profile is read only at login.
Add these lines to ~/.bashrc, or modify any
existing entry:
EDITOR=vim
VISUAL=$EDITOR
export EDITOR VISUAL
Obviously, you'll enter the editor of your choice.
Usually it is better to use a console text editor like JOE, Pico,
Vim, or Emacs. You may select an X editor like Kwrite or GEdit, but
keep in mind there may be times when X is not available, so these
won't always work. It is important to use both the
VISUAL and EDITOR variables. VISUAL is an older term, leftover from
ancient times, but some programes still look for it.
Make sure your ~/.bash_profile calls
~/.bashrc:
# include .bashrc if it exists
if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then
source ~/.bashrc
fi
6.15.3 See Also
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