To set the default editor you can add the following to your shell configuration ( ~/. The one you are using has the * in front Selection Path Priority Status This can be used to open files and projects in Sublime Text, as well working as an EDITOR for unix tools, such as git and subversion. If you need to use a text editor from the command line, you can use nano. There are a variety of text editors used within the shell, but three stand out as being ubiquitous: ed, vi, and emacs. To know that is the default command line text editor in your system you can try one of the following methods:įirst Method: sudo update-alternatives -config editor All of the configurations and settings in Linux are saved in text files. While when using the command line so you are using the command line text editors. The default text editor when using the GUI is not the same as the command line text editors so when you are opening a file using GUI you probably are using the GUI text editors which is gedit by default. The command line editors such as vim, nano, emacs, etc.It is actually a line editor, one of the earliest form of text editors. ed is probably one of the earliest text editor developed for Unix systems.

The use of macros allows one to automate almost all actions, which makes it very powerful as a text editor. It is extensible, customizable, self-documenting with over 2000 built-in commands and macros. Not nice, not powerfull, but it may help sometimes. As explained here, this will forward the input in the console to your file.

You can invoke all of this programs by typing the command name followed by the file name you want to edit. Emacs is a very powerful text editor that has once been the favored editor of programmers. (not enough reputation to comment, so will do it here) As far as I know, there's not a built-in editor however, a workaround would be to use: type CON>myfile.txt. First of all you should notice that there are two types of text editors. Now we will see programs that can be used as text editors.

Command line text editor