EDIT: I just noticed that when I hit Enter on the ranger (if it is executed with terminator -e ranger) then nano opens while with e it uses my main editor. In contrast, when I use a normal shell to execute ranger and then I hit Enter, my main editor shows up. By normal, I mean if I launch firstly the terminator and then the ranger.
Why is it different?
I saw your previous question , if you want some environment variable to be set before executing any programs , edit /etc/profile (provided you're using bash) , add everything you need. e.g export EDITOR=nano
~/.bashrc file that EDITOR=subl. Should I export it?
Commented
Jun 1, 2012 at 10:06
/etc/profile is for all users. ~/.bashrc is the right location to change settings for a single user.
.bashrc, put it in ~/.profile.
Commented
Jun 2, 2012 at 0:32
/etc/profile? Everything that reads it also reads ~/.profile. In .bashrc, it wouldn't make any difference whether it's the first line or not.
Commented
Jun 2, 2012 at 0:33
When you run terminator -e ranger, the terminal emulator starts the program ranger directly inside it. When you run terminator and then start ranger in the shell, the terminal emulator runs a shell which runs ranger. The main difference is that your shell's interactive initialization file is sourced (e.g. ~/.bashrc for bash, ~/.zshrc for zsh). If your shell rc file sets some environment variables, you'll get different results depending on whether a program was started through an interactive shell or not. Here, it looks like you're setting EDITOR or VISUAL in your .bashrc. If you don't, you get your system's default, which is nano.
The fix is to set environments variable where they should be set, i.e., in your session initialization file. On most setups, this is ~/.profile. Do not set environment variables in .bashrc, .zshrc or the like. See
Which setup files should be used for setting up environment variables with bash?
Difference between .bashrc and .bash_profile
Correctly setting environment
.bashrc, etc are equally valid IMHO. That's how I do it anyway. If you run with the defaults of many terminal emulators, .bash_profile, etc are only for things you do once per login session, e.g. start ssh-agent, run ssh-add. My point is not to claim I know the One True Way, but to observe that blanket statements saying use .profile don't acknowledge that the alternative is also fine.
.profile (or .bash_profile or .zprofile or .login). Saying that .bashrc is equally valid doesn't acknowledge the numerous problems that it causes, one of which was the very source of this question.
Commented
Jun 2, 2012 at 13:38
.profile and .bashrc, then putting environment variables in .bashrc can make a mismatched environment more likely. I'm coming from a different angle: I assume the graphical login session sources .profile (roughly speaking), and that .profile sources .bashrc (or similar). Neither of us has actually established that our assumptions hold in this case AFAICT.