Git Editor Roulette

A question came up about setting the Git editor to a bash function, which I could not figure out. I was, however, able to set the Git editor to a bash script. As a proof of concept, here is a bash script to randomly choose an editor (nano or vim) when using Git.

I saved this file as ~/my-random-git-editor-script

#!/bin/bash

if (( RANDOM % 2 )); then
    editor="nano"
else
    editor="vim"
fi

exec "$editor" "$@"

and made it executable by running

chmod +x ~/my-random-git-editor-script

and finally I updated my Git config to use the script by running

git config --global core.editor "~/my-random-git-editor-script"

Sal Ferrarello (@salcode)

Sal is a PHP and JavaScript developer with a focus on the WordPress platform. He is a conference speaker with a background including Piano Player, Radio DJ, Magician/Juggler, Beach Photographer, and High School Math Teacher. Sal can be found professionally at WebDevStudios, where he works as a principal engineer.