How can I use Atom as the default editor for "open"?

I would like to set Atom as my default editor for open.

In order to do this, I set in my .bashrc:

export EDITOR="atom -nw"

and reload the file with source .bashrc. Anyway, when I try to open a text file through open filename, it always opens it with TextEdit.

I also tried variations of the above, such as export EDITOR=atom, or exporting VISUAL.

I am sure that .bashrc gets loaded on login.

What am I missing/doing wrong?

The open command is part of OS X and uses Finder's default “Open With…” application to open the file, just like double-clicking it in Finder. $EDITOR is used for things like fc where it is used as the default command-line editor (a replacement for vim or emacs).

To use Atom with the open command, you can select a file of the type you want in Finder, press ⌘ command+I for “Get Info”, and then change “Open With:” to Atom, and click “Change All…”.

Alternatively you can define an alias like

alias e="atom -nw"

in your .bashrc and then run e file-to-edit.txt whenever you want to edit a file in Atom.

The actual answer is:

export EDITOR="/Applications/Atom.app/Contents/MacOS/Atom -nw"