Package: manpages
Version: 4.11-1
Severity: wishlist
The environ(7) man page says:
SHELL The pathname of the user's login shell.
PAGER The user's preferred utility to display text files.
EDITOR/VISUAL
The user's preferred utility to edit text files.
but doesn't say whether the pathnames must be absolute or they can
be resolved using $PATH, or whether they can have options.
Note that at least for SHELL, this is not specified by POSIX. I've
raised the issue in the Austin Group mailing-list, and the answer I
got until now is that "what constitutes a valid value for a platform
should be documented".
Since OpenSSH assumes that $SHELL is an absolute pathname (when set),
I suppose that the documentation should be:
SHELL The absolute pathname of the user's login shell.
For PAGER, POSIX says: "Any string acceptable as a command_string
operand to the sh -c command shall be valid."
For EDITOR, it does not need to be an absolute pathname since POSIX
gives the example:
EDITOR=vi fc
and since it is specified as "the name of a utility", I assume that
arguments (options) must not be provided. Page 3013 about "more", it
is said: "If the last pathname component in EDITOR is either vi or ex,
[...]", thus again, it is assumed to be a pathname.
For VISUAL, POSIX says: "Determine a pathname of a utility to invoke
when the visual command [...]", thus it is also a pathname. It is not
clear whether the pathname must be absolute, but for consistency with
EDITOR, I assume that it will be resolved using $PATH.
-- System Information:
Debian Release: buster/sid
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