EDITOR is set properly in rc.conf but the rest of the system doesn't seem to recognize this. bug is reproducable on 3 different 2006.1 systems. nano for crontab is really starting to get on my nerves export EDITOR=/usr/bin/vim is a temporary fix. Reproducible: Always
my guess is you're testing this by simply loading up a new shell EDITOR is only read from /etc/rc.conf when EDITOR is not set in your environment, so simply changing the file and loading a new shell probably seems broken as you have EDITOR set in your environment already
I haven't set it anywhere. so where is gentoo setting it. and more importantly why?
to correct myself I haven't set it outside of rc.conf. and the only reference I've found to it is in /etc/profile. which seems to be saying check rc.conf or set editor to nano. I could be wrong though. this is an unaltered /etc/profile from the 2006.1 tarball. I've tried removing the nano line but it doesn't fix the issue.
basically you're screwed until you reboot so reboot your system and then see if EDITOR is still hoked