Ubuntu – Change default text editor for crontab to vim

bashtext-editorsUbuntu

I'm using ubuntu 9.10 and the default text editor is nano, which i hate. (doesn't everyone?)

Normally it's not a problem as i just vi or gedit everything but crontab -e is opening with nano. I tried changing it to vim using sudo update-alternatives --config editor and selecting option 3 ("/usr/bin/vim.basic"). This has changed it for sudo and non-sudo alike. But crontab -e still opens nano. Any ideas? max

Best Answer

The crontab -e command will check the environment variables $EDITOR and $VISUAL for an override of the default text editor, so...

export VISUAL=vim

or 

export EDITOR=vim

should do the trick.

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