Problem: I don’t know where my root users crontab file is, and this doesn’t usually matter because using the command ‘crontab -e’ opens it for editing anyway… but it opens in VI and I am too stupid / lazy / in a rush to use VI.
[Edit – mid 2018: Earlier this year I went through about 3 weeks of IDE/Editor hell and taught myself Vim. It’s… wonderful]
Solution: The -e switch makes the file open in whatever the default editor for the environment is. To override this, pass the EDITOR environment var to the command when it’s run:
sudo env EDITOR=nano crontab -e |
Please let me know if this nano tip was useful, just one click!
- +96 thumb, 124 overall.
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It was very nice!! I hate vim with a passion.
To make it permanent and effective for all users, put a .sh file in /etc/profile.d/ e.g.:
$ nano /etc/profile.d/nano.sh
export VISUAL=”nano”
export EDITOR=”nano”
Log out and log in, then crontab -e will open with nano.
Why one would mess with nano /etc/profile.d/nano.sh ? Just
echo export EDITOR=”nano” >> /etc/profile
# It’s NOT a good idea to change this file unless you know what you
# are doing. It’s much better to create a custom.sh shell script in
# /etc/profile.d/ to make custom changes to your environment, as this
# will prevent the need for merging in future updates.
That’s why one would mess with nano /etc/profile.d/nano.sh
$ nano ~/.bash_profile
export VISUAL=”nano”
export EDITOR=”nano”
$ source ~/.bash_profile
I simply deleted the vi from /usr/bin with rm /usr/bin/vi and nano become the default editor automatically 😀