Edit Command in Editor

Sometimes you have a complex command line or something recalled from your history you want to change and execute.

In Bash you could call <ctrl>-x followed by: <ctrl>-e and your chosen editor would open up with the relevant line for you editing pleasure.

In Zsh this can also be accomplished using: <ctrl>-x followed by: e

And just to recap:

It will spin up the editor defined in the environment variable: $VISUAL if not defined: $EDITOR

Do note that is does not respect $VISUAL and uses $EDITOR.

env | ag "editor|^visual"
VISUAL=code --wait --new-window
EDITOR=/usr/bin/vim

If you are ind doubt about the keybinding or want to change it, execute: keybind and see the current list of bindings.

bindkey|ag edit
"^Xe" edit-command-line

The binding is defined in: ~/.zshrc

cat ~/.zshrc |ag edit-command-line
autoload edit-command-line
zle -N edit-command-line
bindkey '^Xe' edit-command-line

Resources and References

• The Valuable Dev: “A Guide to the Zsh Line Editor with Examples”
• StackExchange: “CTRL+X+E in ZSH [duplicate]”
• TIL/Bash: “Edit Complex CLI in Editor”