How do I make a terminal alias that edits root owned files in a GUI text editor?

Question

How can I quickly edit root owned files like /etc/hosts and /etc/apache2/httpd.conf in a text editor such as TextEdit which would let me do modern text editor operations, without actually running the editor in sudo -b mode first, or without using nano, vim and other terminal based editors?

Ever since Lion came out, doing

$sudo open -e /etc/hosts

no longer works - the file remains locked when TextEdit opens it.

Answer 1

sudo and open provide all the functionality already for editing files of other users so you can just run

SUDO_EDITOR="open -FWne" sudo -e /etc/hosts

to edit /etc/hosts. Make sure to quit Textedit at the end (Cmd-Q) because otherwise sudo won't notice that you're done with editing.

To make life easier add the following to your .bashrc (or .alias if you have it)

alias sudoedit='SUDO_EDITOR="open -FWne" sudo -e'

Answer 2

Here is a step by step solution:

1. Download the free TextWrangler app ( http://www.barebones.com/products/TextWrangler/ )

2. Create a .profile file in your home folder if it does not exist

   $ touch ~/.profile
   $ open -e ~/.profile
   

3. Edit the file and give it the following aliases, along with any others you may wish to add:

   alias edit_hosts='sudo open -a /Applications/TextWrangler.app/Contents/MacOS/TextWrangler /etc/hosts'
   alias edit_vhosts='sudo open -a /Applications/TextWrangler.app/Contents/MacOS/TextWrangler /etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf'
   alias edit_httpd='sudo open -a /Applications/TextWrangler.app/Contents/MacOS/TextWrangler /etc/apache2/httpd.conf'
   alias edit_alias='open -a /Applications/TextWrangler.app/Contents/MacOS/TextWrangler ~/.profile'
   
   alias reload_alias='. ~/.profile'
   

4. Save the file and run:

   $ reload_alias
   

Now when you run edit_hosts or the other edit_* aliases, the TextWrangler app should open the hosts file. It will still be locked, but this application can unlock it once you start editing, it will prompt you. You now have a one-line command to edit the root owned files of your choice.

You can also alias just the first part of the path:

alias edit='sudo open -a /Applications/TextWrangler.app/Contents/MacOS/TextWrangler'

which will let you execute commands such as

$ edit /etc/hosts

and still achieve the same results.

Edit: other answer looks to be a better solution as it does not require the download and installation of another application.