Move in crontab -e editor

croneditorsvi

I'm trying to manipulate the editor of crontab but it's really really confusing.
So I launch the creation of a new crontab with crontab -e
Then the default editor opens.

Now from there, it's seems to be LAGGING !!??

How do I move around in the editor ?

How do I get "–INSERT–" to show and then write my "scritp" and then type :wq to write and save exit ?

How can I go back to writing mode after pushing once esc or : ?

Best Answer

You can pick any editor you like by setting the $EDITOR variable before calling crontab -e

e.g.

$ EDITOR=emacs crontab -e

will run emacs as your editor. If you have a favourite editor then you can select that.

Many programs that call an external editor may also use this $EDITOR variable so you may find it useful to set it permanently in your .profile with

export EDITOR=emacs

Now crontab -e and others will automatically select this editor.

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