VISUAL vs. EDITOR – what’s the difference

environment-variablesexvi

I generally set both VISUAL and EDITOR environment variables to the same thing, but what's the difference? Why would I set them differently? When developing apps, why should I choose to look at VISUAL before EDITOR or vice versa?

Best Answer

The EDITOR editor should be able to work without use of "advanced" terminal functionality (like old ed or ex mode of vi). It was used on teletype terminals.

A VISUAL editor could be a full screen editor as vi or emacs.

E.g. if you invoke an editor through bash (using C-x C-e), bash will try first VISUAL editor and then, if VISUAL fails (because terminal does not support a full-screen editor), it tries EDITOR.

Nowadays, you can leave EDITOR unset or set it to vi -e.

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