Switch between vim and nano for editing your crontab

Here's how to switch between vim and nano for editing your crontab in popular Linux distros.

Ste Wright

Jun 28, 2018 • 1 min read

This is here for my benefit more than anything, its a command I find myself googling quite a lot. Anyway, if you’re landing here, you probably need to switch too, so here’s how to switch between vim and nano for editing your crontab in Linux.

Switch to nano for editing your crontab

Run this command from your terminal to switch to using nano for editing your crontab in Linux operating systems:

export VISUAL=nano; crontab -e

Switch to vim for editing your crontab

As you guessed, it’s pretty much the same to switch to vim. Run this command from your terminal to switch to using vim for editing your crontab in Linux operating systems:

export VISUAL=vim; crontab -e

I couldn’t find any vim or nano photos, so here, have a mushroom, a geeky toy mushroom.

There you have it, simple. Have a good day now.

Switch to nano for editing your crontab

Switch to vim for editing your crontab

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