How to specify a editor to open crontab file? "export EDITOR=vi" does not work

linux vim

Very probable that your VISUAL environment variable is set to something else. Try:

export VISUAL=vi

linux vim

To quote the man:

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

Most often if you run crontab -e from X, you have VISUAL set; that's what is used. Try this:

VISUAL=vi crontab -e

It just worked for me :)

linux vim

If the above methods don't work (as they didn't work on my Ubuntu 13.04 installation) try:

There are a number of alternative ways:

1) Run select-editor

select-editor

2) Manually edit the file: ~/.selected_editor specifying your preferred editor. With this option you can specify editor parameters.

# Generated by /usr/bin/select-editorSELECTED_EDITOR="/usr/bin/emacs -nw"

3) You can specify on the fly on the commandline with:

env VISUAL="emacs -nw" crontab -e

CodeHunter