Change default Linux / UNIX text editor from VI to Pico
Q. I find vi hard to use. How do I change my default text editor from vim / vi to Pico under Debian Linux?
A. To use and change an editor to edit your text message, set the variable EDITOR to the pathname of the vi / vim binary file. You need to use export or set command for the same purpose.
Many Linux / UNIX command read shell EDITOR environment variable to determine which editor to use for editing a text file.
Set default text editor to pico
Type the command as follows:
$ which pico
Output:
/usr/bin/pico
Now setup a new text editor:
export EDITOR=/usr/bin/pico
OR
export EDITOR=pico
Add above line to ~/.bashrc file:
$ vi ~/.bashrc
Append text as follows:
export EDITOR=pico
Close and save the file. There is no no need to reboot system.
Also you can add alias if you want:
alias vi=/usr/bin/pico
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Discussion on This FAQ
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Tags: alias_command, default_text_editor, editor_environment, editor_pico, EDITOR_variable, export_command, set_command, set_EDITOR_variable, shell_editor, variable_editor, vim
May 6th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
just a small suggestion:
alias pico=’nano -w’
thats because not every distro has pico symlinked to nano (nano is the open source pico) and because nano by default wraps long lines (-w).
also someone might be interested in seting TERM to linux
export TERM=linux
so he can use home/end/delete and numpad correctly in nano and also in shell
hope im not too much offtopic (a)
July 6th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
Thanks for the handy reference!
August 6th, 2008 (5 weeks ago) at 8:48 am
Thanks for the help. Very useful and concise explanation.