How to Change the Default Command Line Editor in Snow Leopard

These are instructions to change your default command line editor in Snow Leopard.

1. Create or edit a file in your home directory called .profile (make sure you include the ".") using TextEdit or the editor of your choice. Note that files beginning with a period are invisible in Finder, so to use TextEdit you may have to open it with Terminal using the following command:
   open ~/.profileIf you get the following error, the file does not yet exist and needs to be created:
   The file /Users/randomuser/.profile does not exist.
2. Add one of the following lines to the file based on your preferred editor:
• emacs:
  export EDITOR=/usr/bin/emacs
• vi:
  export EDITOR=/usr/bin/vi
• TextEdit (may have side effects):
  export EDITOR=/Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit