Changes: Set Vim as your default editor for Unix

Revision as of 18:35, 9 May 2008

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Tip 175 Printable Monobook Previous Next

created December 6, 2001 · complexity basic · author bhaskar · version 5.7

Normally, typing edit on a Unix system brings up the vi editor and not Vim. If you've installed Vim in your home directory somewhere, you don't have a root account, and you want to make Vim the default editor for anything you do (e.g. edit a SQL statement in SQLplus), define these three variables in your .profile:

VIM=<base directory where Vim executable is placed>
VIMRUNTIME=<base directory where Vim runtimes are kept>
EDITOR=$VIM/vim

If you've installed vim with another name (say, vim.exe) then change EDITOR=$VIM/vim to EDITOR=$VIM/vim.exe

Source .profile, and the next time you start an editor from any program you'll bring up Vim.

Comments

Notable programs which use the $EDITOR variable include CVS and Mutt. Anyone care to add to the list?

$EDITOR is the place to have your editor defined. There's also $VISUAL to define a non-line oriented editor (which is actually vi's place). All programs on unixlikes spawning editors should support these. Some have reasons not to and some are just stupidly made and others stupidly configured.

@@ Line 12: / Line 12: @@
 |category2=
 }}
-Normally typing edit brings up the vi editor and not Vim.
+Normally, typing edit on a Unix system brings up the vi editor and not Vim.
 If you've installed Vim in your home directory somewhere,
 you don't have a root account, and you want to
 make Vim the default editor for anything you do
-(e.g. edit a SQL statement in SQLplus), define these three variables in your .profile
+(e.g. edit a SQL statement in SQLplus), define these three variables in your .profile:
 <pre>
@@ Line 24: / Line 24: @@
 </pre>
-Note: If you've installed vim with another name (say, vim.exe) then
+If you've installed vim with another name (say, vim.exe) then
 change EDITOR=$VIM/vim to EDITOR=$VIM/vim.exe
-Source the .profile, then the next time you start an editor from any
+Source .profile, and the next time you start an editor from any
 program you'll bring up Vim.