DOKK / manpages / debian 12 / sensible-utils / sensible-editor.1.en
SENSIBLE-EDITOR(1) General Commands Manual SENSIBLE-EDITOR(1)

sensible-editor - sensible editing

sensible-editor [OPTIONS...]

sensible-editor makes sensible decisions on which editor to call. Programs in Debian can use this script as their default editor. sensible-editor try to do in the following order:

1
if VISUAL environment variable exists, execute VISUAL [OPTIONS]
2
if EDITOR environment variable exists, execute EDITOR [OPTIONS]
3
source the contents of file ~/.selected_editor and, if SELECTED_EDITOR environment variable exists execute SELECTED_EDITOR [OPTIONS]
4
run editor [OPTIONS] command
5
finally run nano-tiny [OPTIONS] command

environ(7) for documentation of the EDITOR, VISUAL variables
select-editor(1) for changing a user's default editor.
editor(1) for default system wide editor.

This command is protected against trivial fork bomb, when user set EDITOR=sensible-editor wider loops are still possible.

Documentation of behavior of sensible-utils under a debian system is available under section 11.4 of debian-policy usually installed under /usr/share/doc/debian-policy (you might need to install debian-policy)

14 Nov 2018 Debian