Unable to change the default editor in 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
         


        

Answer 1

if you want vi to be your default history editor (which is why I'm here)

edit ~/.bashrc and add

set -o vi

anywhere in the file. Then all the lovely vi command history is available (esc k etc).

Sorry if this is slightly off topic, but my search landed me here....

Answer 2

I don't have an EDITOR environmental variable. Perhaps you could specify your distribution? My bashrc does define this:

alias vi='vim'

and supposedly if vim can't find a file called .vimrc in your home directory it runs in "compatibility mode" and you only get vi features until you say type :nocp

If it is based on your EDITOR environmental variable you would set it like this in BASH:

export EDITOR='vim'

Answer 3

I needed to install Vim manually in a virtual environment. The only command that worked for me was:

`sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/editor editor /usr/bin/vim 100

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