Your Default Editor
Various Linux programs will run an editor when necessary, and by
default the editor is vim. For example, your email program may invoke
an editor to compose a new message, and less
invokes an editor if you type “v”. But
what if you don’t want vim to be your default editor? Set the
environment variables VISUAL
and
EDITOR
to your choice, for
example:
$ EDITOR=emacs
$ VISUAL=emacs
$ export EDITOR VISUAL Optional
Both variables are necessary because different programs check
one variable or the other. Set EDITOR
and VISUAL
in your ~/.bash_profile startup file if you want
your choices made permanent. Any program can be made your default
editor as long as it accepts a filename as an argument.
Regardless of how you set these variables, all system administrators should know at least basic vim and emacs commands in case a system tool suddenly runs an editor on a critical file.
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