Unix Editors

As Unix relies heavily on text files to do most things, there are many text editors. Due to many computery people's inexplicable obstinance, choice of editor has been the subject of holy wars.

The vi text editor is often considered scary as users that just try and type are confronted with random beeps and error messages. To quit (without saving) you need to type :q!

(Un)fortunately (depending on your preferences) vi is often the default editor for a lot of tasks. You can spawn it from less by pressing v. Other programs, such as cvs and crontab load it when they require input.

If you don't want to use vi then set both the $EDITOR and $VISUAL environment variables to the name of the editor you want to use instead.