Re: edit error

[Michael Goffioul]

On Tue, Apr 10, 2012 at 3:30 PM, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso
<address@hidden> wrote:
> On 8 April 2012 14:54, Miikka Tulonen <address@hidden> wrote:
>> Old 3.2.0 opened the editor without problems so I was slightly annoyed by
>> this sort of BS with the newer versions. In my case fiddling with the
>> Octave’s startup script helped to solve the problem. (Took a whole day to
>> figure out this very simple fix)
>
> You don't need to modify edit.m to do this. Do you have an octaverc?
> That's where you can select your editor.
>
> I imagine Ben Lindner's old 3.2.4 Windows build set this variable for
> you, but we certainly don't set a default editor in Octave, and never
> did.

Actually, we sort of do. edit.m uses by default EDITOR, which defaults
to emacs. So if you don't specify anything, octave uses emacs by
default.

The additional problem in edit.m is due to persistent variables. If
edit.m is executed before changing EDITOR, then the default editor in
edit.m is fixed to the EDITOR value at the time of the first call.
Changing EDITOR afterwards doesn't have any effect. That's what
confuses users, as the help for edit.m mentions that it uses EDITOR by
default.

Michael.