From: Bastien Roucariès <rouca@xxxxxxxxxx>
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.
This issue was raised in the Austin Group mailing-list, and the answer
is that "what constitutes a valid value for a platform
should be documented" [1].
Since OpenSSH assumes that $SHELL is an absolute pathname (when set),
it is supposed 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", It assumes 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, it will be resolved using $PATH.
[1] https://www.mail-archive.com/austin-group-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx/msg01399.html
Reported-by: Vincent Lefevre <vincent@xxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Bastien Roucaries <rouca@xxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Alejandro Colomar <alx.manpages@xxxxxxxxx>
---
man7/environ.7 | 8 +++++++-
1 file changed, 7 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
diff --git a/man7/environ.7 b/man7/environ.7
index 7d2bc5a86..b30f9a38e 100644
--- a/man7/environ.7
+++ b/man7/environ.7
@@ -113,16 +113,22 @@ The current working directory.
Set by some shells.
.TP
.B SHELL
-The pathname of the user's login shell.
+The absolute pathname of the user's login shell.
.TP
.B TERM
The terminal type for which output is to be prepared.
.TP
.B PAGER
The user's preferred utility to display text files.
+Any string acceptable as a command_string operand to the
+.I sh -c
+command shall be valid.
.TP
.BR EDITOR / VISUAL
The user's preferred utility to edit text files.
+Any string acceptable as a command_string operand to the
+.I sh -c
+command shall be valid.
.\" .TP
.\" .B BROWSER
.\" The user's preferred utility to browse URLs. Sequence of colon-separated
--
2.30.0
