Matlab external editor on Ubuntu 16.10

Question

I'm currently switching to linux from windows, and I'd like to use matlab in -nodesktop mode. I configured gedit to open .m files with Matlab syntax highlighting, and that is ok. But I'm not able to start gedit (or any other external editor) via the edit command.

How should I configure the external editor in Matlab preferences? I tried selecting Text Editor and setting it to /usr/bin/gedit (or /usr/bin/emacs ), but It's not working.

I'm running Matlab r2016b under Ubuntu 16.10

Thanks!

Answer 1

When running MATLAB in the console, the edit command respects the EDITOR environment variable. To set that, simply call

export EDITOR=/usr/bin/gedit

in the terminal, before you run matlab . If you always work with gedit, you can add that line to your .bashrc file, which is automatically loaded when opening a terminal window.