Editor for crontab?

[beavers]

I would like to set vim as the editor for `crontab -e`, and per the man page I have tried setting EDITOR and/or VISUAL in ~/.profile. This works fine; however, I do not want either of these parameters to take effect for the ksh command-line editing mode. Is there a way to use vim _only_ for crontab?

[jggimi]

Hello and welcome!

Consider using your shell and its alias facility. For example, something like this:

$ alias crontab='env EDITOR=/usr/local/bin/vim /usr/bin/crontab'

[Head_on_a_Stick]

Originally Posted by beavers

I have tried setting EDITOR and/or VISUAL in ~/.profile. This works fine; however, I do not want either of these parameters to take effect for the ksh command-line editing mode

Add this line to ~/.profile (if it does not already exist):

export ENV="${HOME}/.kshrc"

Then add this line to ~/.kshrc:

set -o emacs

This will allow you to set VISUAL to vim but keep ksh's stock editing mode.

[beavers]

Very nice, thank you both!