Editor Change

How can i change which editor is the default on opensuse 10.2.
I want to use nano instead of vi (vim).

Thanks in Advance.

 

In the bash shell you can set the default editor by

Code:

export VISUAL=/bin/nano

. If you want this to be automatic, add this line to the login script in your home directory

Code:

~/.bashrc

 

With the above mentioned solution you can set the editor for every seperate user, but what do you need to do, to set nano as the default editor for every user ??

 

How do you invoke the "default" editor?

 

On openSuse 10.2 the default editor is vim (i believe), but i als0 want to use as root the nano editor.

 

But you can. Just type

Code:

nano <filename>

Or am I mis-understanding you? Sorry.

 

The problem I have is, when i want to edit a cronjob for a user (crontab -u user -e) then you don't have the control over the editor you want to use. Suse then opens the cronjob in Vim.

 

For

Code:

crontab -e 

you need to set the VISUAL environment variable as mentioned before. Works on my Ubuntu/Debian systems.

 

Oke, I agree with you, but now i need to put the

Code:

EXPORT VISUAL=/bin/nano

in the ~/.bashrc for the root user, but where can i find this for the root user ??

 

When you are on the system as root (either by logging in directly or by 'su -' or similar), use the command

Code:

cd ~

. It will take you to the home dir of the effective user. Then

Code:

nano .bashrc

edit and you're done.

If you login as a regular user 1st and the 'upgrade' yourself, you can also edit the .bashrc file of the regular user. Environment variables are promoted to sub-shells.

 

Thanks Martin,

I had to change a little bit to get it working under opensuse 10.2

Code:

export VISUAL=/usr/bin/nano

Log off and on and it works

 

Distribution peculiarities.