How to open a text file with TextWrangler from the Terminal (command line)

Here are some possible answers, all using the 'open' command-line utility.

The -a option means "open the file argument with the named application":

open -a TextEdit file.txt

The -e option means "open the file argument with the TextEdit application":

open -e file.txt

The -t option means "open the file with the default application for editing text files, as determined via LaunchServices". By default, this will be /Applications/TextEdit.app; however, it's possible for this setting to get overridden:

open -t file.txt

Finally, any file that's of the "text" type will get opened by the application bound to the text type if you just say open file.txt. You can use the "file" command to reveal what the operating system thinks the file type is: file file.txt. So, for example, if you renamed "file.txt" to just "textfile" then open textfile would still open it in the default text-file editing application, as long as file textfile still thought that "textfile" was actually a text file.

A short 'help' file on open can be found by running

open --help

Or you can read the whole manual with

man open

Sorry, but /usr/bin is still a root/wheel directory, so it is actually going to be worse to install the textwrangler stuff there.

In any case, in your terminal type

echo $PATH and see if /usr/local/bin is in the path. If /usr/local/bin is in your path all the stuff you install there will NOT need root permissions to be run. If it is not, you can add it as such:

go to /etc/paths.d/

create a text file that you can call localstuff (or whatever)

edit localstuff putting /usr/local/bin in it.

Example:

$ ls /etc/paths.d/
50-X11   MacGPG2  TeX      TeXbin   git      julia

$ cat /etc/paths.d/julia 
/usr/local/julia

$ echo $PATH
/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11/bin:/usr/local/git/bin:/usr/local/julia:/usr/local/MacGPG2/bin:/usr/texbin:/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin

make sure that your shell is a login shell in whatever terminal you are using, the OSX predicated way of adding stuff to $PATH seems to break if you do not use a login shell.

As I said though, chances are that /usr/local/bin is in your user's $PATH anyway, so no need to worry. I'd also move all the textwrangler files you put in /usr/bin in /usr/local/bin to avoid future problems.