Edit crontab with an editor other than the default

Question

I would like to edit crontab with vi once. My default editor is nano, and I want to keep it that way. I only want to edit with vi one time. I don't want to change the default to vi then back to nano after editing. Can this be done?

possible duplicate of https://askubuntu.com/questions/55022/changing-default-crontab-editor — Deepak Kumar Singh, Mar 09 '20 at 08:50

score 28 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 19 '16 at 19:01

28

crontab should respect the EDITOR environment variable, so you can just do (for the root crontab for example)

sudo EDITOR=vi crontab -e

From man crontab

The -e option is used to edit the  current  crontab  using  the  editor
specified  by  the  VISUAL  or EDITOR environment variables.

answered Mar 19 '16 at 19:01

steeldriver

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1

I don't think you want sudo here unless you want to edit really fundamental tasks. Most people run cron jobs at user-level. Also, on Mac OS X if you use sudo it gives an error. Without it it works fine. – Sridhar Sarnobat Dec 05 '17 at 23:58

Sergio Mcfly PYK · Answer 2 · 2022-03-02T17:30:51.570

5

Specifying nano as the editor for crontab file

export VISUAL=nano

Specifying vim as the editor for crontab file

export VISUAL=vim

now, just try it: crontab -e

edited Mar 02 '22 at 17:30

answered Sep 03 '19 at 14:19

Sergio Mcfly PYK

281

Edit crontab with an editor other than the default

2 Answers2