Text editor

A text editor is Article description::a program to create and edit text files. Although it is not impossible to edit files without using one, text editors make it easy to edit configuration files. The Gentoo @system set contains the package to make sure at least one editor is installed.

Available software
More text editor options can be found online in the app-editors category or by running:

Vim and Vi
If Vim is installed the and  commands become synonymous due to the following link:

The synonymous use also holds for setting editor defaults.

Sudo editor
sudo does not preserve the user's environment variables and therefore may have a different default editor.

Visudo editor
Due to the sensitive nature of it may only edited via the  command which in turn is limited to a predefined selection of editors. Type for more information.

Setting system default
The system wide default text editor can be defined in the file. To change the Gentoo system default from nano to Vim add the path to Vim's executable:

The system default editor can also be set with the utility. Replace  in the following command with a number corresponding to the text editor of choice:

Actually modifies the file above.

The old method of setting the EDITOR variable in is no longer supported. See this article for details.

Next, the environment must be updated by running the following command: