EDIT: Editing the Last Command

The EDIT command loads the last command into a temporary file in your current directory, and then puts you into the default editor. On Unix systems, the default editor is vi. If you leave the editor with saving changes, the edited command is immediately executed. If abort the editor (exiting without saving changes), the command is not executed. Only the first line of the temporary file is read; do NOT use EDIT to create several lines, thinking that you are making a procedure. Procedures are created with PEDIT.

Do not put more than one command in the temporary file you are editing. Do not chain several commands together with semicolons.

For EDIT and other commands which invoke an editor (HEDIT, WEDIT, PEDIT), the default is to execute the editor vi. If you wish to change this, you can do so by setting the environment variable VISUAL to be the editor that you wish to use. For example, to use the emacs editor, execute the following statement BEFORE starting up VISTA (e.g., in your .cshrc file):

 
  setenv VISUAL emacs

In many cases, you may have to provide the full path to an editor, for example:

 
  setenv VISUAL /opt/local/bin/emacs

in order to be able to execute it from within VISTA. It is always a good idea to verify the full path (using the Unix which command) before setting an environment variable.