not command 'subl' found, trying to open ~/.bash_profile with it

Question

NEWBIE QUESTION!!

Hi guys,

I'm trying to open the ~/.bash_profile file I just created with 'subl' command, I created the ~/.bash_profile file using the touch command, as follow:

touch ~/.bash_profile

it did created it.

now I have to open it like this

subl ~/.bash_profile

and I get this following error

not command 'subl' found, did you mean:
  command 'subs' from package 'libsubtitles-perl' (universe)
  command 'publ' from package 'atfs' (universe)
subl: command not found

can you please advise in what to do? I'm really new on this and I haven't found any helpful answer around.

possible duplicate of Lauching Sublime Text From Command Line — heemayl, Jul 14 '15 at 14:22
Do you really need to use subl (the Sublime Text editor) specifically? Did you actually install it? Otherwise, you should be able to open the file with any standard text editor such as gedit or even nano instead — steeldriver, Jul 14 '15 at 14:23
Creating ~/.bash_profile is not a good idea unless you are sure of it.it will now take precedence over ~/.profile for login shells..make sure you source ~/.profile from it or make necessary modifications.. — heemayl, Jul 14 '15 at 14:25

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 14 '15 at 14:31

subl is a command in OSX, not Linux.

I would suggest using the simple text editor nano for editing files. The correct command would be:

nano ~/.bash_profile

If you really need to use sublime-text there's a guide to installing it here. If it's already installed you'd have to make alias files, or symlinks, to use subl, which is described near the bottom of the linked article.

A.B. · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-14T15:23:57.567

If you really need your beloved subl command in Linux >;) and you trust me, than use the three lines below, … If not, you should ignore them.

printf "%s\n\t%s\n%s\n" "subl() {" "gedit \"\$@\"" "}" >> .bashrc
source ~/.bashrc
subl ~/.bash_profile

Wise decision, you could also use gedit or nano instead, both pre-installed on your system. Or install Sublime 3 or my favorite Atom.

Install Atom

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/atom
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install atom

Install Sublime 3

64-bit

wget http://c758482.r82.cf2.rackcdn.com/sublime-text_build-3083_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i sublime-text_build-3083_amd64.deb

32-bit

wget http://c758482.r82.cf2.rackcdn.com/sublime-text_build-3083_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i sublime-text_build-3083_i386.deb

not command 'subl' found, trying to open ~/.bash_profile with it

2 Answers2