NAME

       sensible-editor - launch sensibly chosen text editor

SYNOPSIS

       sensible-editor [OPTIONS...]

DESCRIPTION

       sensible-editor  makes sensible decisions on which editor to call.  Programs in Debian can
       invoke this script to get a good default editor.

       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 select-editor, then tries the default editor command defined by the
       alternatives system, with a series of hard-coded command names as fallbacks.

       Variables  will  be  skipped  if unset or null, but may include extra whitespace-separated
       parameters such as a --verbose flag.  Once 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.

       The specific candidates sensible-editor tries, in order, are:

       • $VISUAL - see environ(7)

       • $EDITOR - see environ(7)

       • $SENSIBLE_EDITOR

       • $SELECTED_EDITOR - see select-editor(1)

       • editor - see editor(1), update-alternatives(1)

       • nano

       • nano-tiny

       • vi

       If all of these fail, 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.

BUGS

       This command takes precautions against launching itself in an infinite loop if a user sets
       EDITOR=sensible-editor but indirect loops are still possible.

SEE ALSO

       sensible-browser(1), sensible-pager(1), select-editor(1), environ(7),  editor(1),  update-
       alternatives(1)

CONFORMS TO

       The  behavior  of  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/