[bash] How to open Emacs inside Bash

I'm using Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot). When I type the command "emacs" in the terminal, it opens Emacs as a separate window. How can I open it inside the terminal, like the nano editor?

This question is related to bash emacs

The answer is


I didn't like the alias solution for my purposes. For one, it didn't work for setting export EDITOR="emacs -nw".

But you can pass --without-x to configure and then just the regular old Emacs will always open in terminal.

curl http://gnu.mirrors.hoobly.com/emacs/emacs-25.3.tar.xz
tar -xvzf emacs-25.3.tar.xz && cd emacs-25.3
./configure --without-x
make && sudo make install

If you need to open Emacs without X:

emacs -nw

emacs hello.c -nw

This is to open a hello.c file using Emacs inside the terminal.


Just type emacs -nw. This won't open an X window.


It can be useful also to add the option --no-desktop to avoid launching several buffers saved.


Try emacs —daemon to have Emacs running in the background, and emacsclient to connect to the Emacs server.

It’s not much time overhead saved on modern systems, but it’s a lot better than running several instances of Emacs.


In the spirit of providing functionality, go to your .profile or .bashrc file located at /home/usr/ and at the bottom add the line:

alias enw='emacs -nw'

Now each time you open a terminal session you just type, for example, enw and you have the Emacs no-window option with three letters :).