Unable to change the default editor in the terminal

Question

My default editor is Pico at my server. I use Bash and Linux. I tried to change Vim to be my default editor unsuccessfully by: ``` echo vim > $EDITOR ``` How can I change Vim to be my default editor? The following code does not work in file .bashrc: ``` export EDITOR='vim' ```

Accepted Answer

Adding

```
export EDITOR=vim
```

to your .bashrc file should really do the trick. (Quotes aren't necessary there and, depending on what quotes you used, they may be the cause for your problem.)

You must open a new shell (or enter `source ~/.bashrc` at the prompt) after modifying file .bashrc for the modification to take effect.

What is the program from which you want Vim to be started?

I haven't used Git, but the documentation reads:

The editor used to edit the commit log message will be chosen from the GIT_EDITOR environment variable, the core.editor configuration variable, the VISUAL environment variable, or the EDITOR environment variable (in that order).

So check whether one of these variables is set:

```
echo $GIT_EDITOR $VISUAL $EDITOR
git config --get-all core.editor
```

For me,

```
export VISUAL=vim
```

solved the problem.

Unable to change the default editor in the terminal

Solution

Problem