.\" -*- nroff -*-
.TH SENSIBLE-EDITOR 1 "28 Aug 2022" "Debian"
.SH NAME
sensible-editor \- launch sensibly chosen text editor
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B sensible-editor
.RI [OPTIONS...]
.SH DESCRIPTION
.BR sensible-editor " makes sensible decisions on which editor to call.
Programs in Debian can invoke this script to get a good default editor.
.PP
.B sensible-editor
looks for an appropriate choice of editor in a series
of places, and uses the first candidate that works.
It starts by checking environment variables,
followed by a variable defined via
.B select-editor,
then tries the default editor command defined by the alternatives system,
with a series of hard-coded command names as fallbacks.
.PP
Variables will be skipped if unset or null, but may include extra
whitespace-separated parameters such as a
.B \-\-verbose
flag.
Once
.BR sensible-editor
has a candidate commandline, it will try to run
it (passing on the arguments it was given as the files to be edited).
If this fails because the command couldn't be executed (exit code 126)
or was not found (exit code 127), it tries the next candidate.
.PP
The specific candidates
.BR sensible-editor
tries, in order, are:
.IP \(bu 2
.B $VISUAL
\(en see
.BR environ
(7)
.IP \(bu 2
.B $EDITOR
\(en see
.BR environ
(7)
.IP \(bu 2
.B $SENSIBLE_EDITOR
.IP \(bu 2
.B $SELECTED_EDITOR
\(en see
.BR select-editor
(1)
.IP \(bu 2
.B editor
\(en see
.BR editor
(1),
.BR update-alternatives
(1)
.IP \(bu 2
.B nano
.IP \(bu 2
.B nano-tiny
.IP \(bu 2
.B vi
.PP
If all of these fail,
.BR sensible-editor
errors out.
This system is designed to make it easy for individual users to
set a personal and/or temporary default, overriding the system-wide
defaults.
.SH BUGS
This command takes precautions against launching itself in an infinite loop
if a user sets
.B \%EDITOR=sensible-editor
but indirect loops are still possible.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR sensible-browser (1),
.BR sensible-pager (1),
.BR select-editor (1),
.BR environ (7),
.BR editor (1),
.BR \%update-alternatives (1)
.SH "CONFORMS TO"
The behavior of
.B sensible-utils
under a Debian system is documented in
section 11.4 of Debian-Policy, available under
/usr/share/doc/debian-policy if debian-policy is installed, or
online at https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/