Sublime text

Sublime Text - Text Editing, Done Right

How to open existing text files with Sublime Text from terminal?

• Open the terminal
• Key in subl path/to/file.txt where subl is the alias shorthand for sublime text

Explanation

1. Determine which shell you're using by running this in Terminal:

echo $SHELL

2. Edit the appropriate configuration file:

My result on macOS is

/bin/zsh

Choose appropriate configuration file

For Bash: ~/.bash_profile or ~/.bashrc
For Zsh (default on newer macOS): ~/.zshrc

3. Open the file with a text editor:

vi ~/.zshrc

4. Existing alias in the file:

alias subl='open -a "Sublime Text"'

5. Save the file, then reload the configuration:

source ~/.zshrc

How to open files with your favorite editor from the terminal?

1. Open your shell config file:

vi ~/.zshrc    # for zsh
vi ~/.bashrc   # for bash

2. Add an alias for your editor:

# VS Code
alias code="open -a 'Visual Studio Code'"
<pre>

Tip: Not sure of the exact app name? Run this to find it:
<pre>
ls /Applications/ | grep -i "visual\|cursor\|zed\|sublime"

The name must exactly match the `.app` filename in `/Applications/` (without the `.app` extension).

3. Reload your config:

source ~/.zshrc    # for zsh
source ~/.bashrc   # for bash

One-liner shortcut:

# Detect current shell and set the corresponding config file
RC_FILE="$HOME/.$(basename $SHELL)rc"

# Append the alias to the config file (>> appends without overwriting)
echo 'alias code="open -a Visual\ Studio\ Code"' >> "$RC_FILE"

# Reload the config file so the alias takes effect immediately
source "$RC_FILE"

How to open and create non-existent files with Sublime Text from terminal?

1. First, edit your .zshrc file and remove the previously defined subl alias

2. Then add the new function definition

Open your

.zshrc

file:

vi ~/.zshrc

3. Find and remove the previous "subl" alias line, which looks something like:

alias subl='open -a "Sublime Text"'

Then add this function:

subl() {
  for f in "$@"; do
    [ -f "$f" ] || touch "$f"
  done
  open -a "Sublime Text" "$@"
}

This function creates a command subl that opens files in Sublime Text while automatically creating any non-existent files:

1. for f in "$@" - Loops through each filename you provide
2. [ -f "$f" ] || touch "$f" - Checks if each file exists, creates it if not
3. open -a "Sublime Text" "$@" - Opens all files in Sublime Text

Simply put: It ensures all files exist before opening them in Sublime Text, preventing "file not found" errors.

4. Save the file, then reload the configuration:

source ~/.zshrc

5. Now it should work properly. Try creating a non-existent file:

subl non-exist.md

This should create the "non-exist.md" file and open it in Sublime Text.

References

• Open File In Sublime From Terminal With Code Examples
• Command Line Interface