Re: Running an editor from ANSI C

On Sun, 9 Jun 2024 07:24:14 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Sat, 8 Jun 2024 22:13:49 +0300, Michael S wrote:
 

On Fri, 7 Jun 2024 23:57:58 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
 

On Fri, 7 Jun 2024 14:24:29 +0300, Michael S wrote:
 

On Fri, 7 Jun 2024 10:47:57 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
   

On Fri, 07 Jun 2024 02:37:42 -0700, Keith Thompson wrote:
   

As for portability, I'm not aware of the $EDITOR convention
being used on non-POSIX systems. 

 
Can non-POSIX systems offer anything better? Any worthwhile
alternative?
 
No. 

 
Yes. The one below is better.
ShellExecute(NULL, "edit", filename, NULL, NULL, SW_NORMAL); 

 
On Windows, that combines the command-line arguments into a single
string. Which then has to be teased apart by the receiving program.
Assuming the two ends can agree on consistent rules for doing so. 

 
You asked for something that is better *for user* than $EDITOR.
The one above is very clearly better for user than $EDITOR. 

 
Neglecting the various potential pitfalls in how the invocation
works, fine.
>

Imaginary pitfalls in this case. All you want to pass to editor is a
file name. Pay attention how the 4th parameter in the call is NULL.

It is smarter - different editors are selected for different file
types. And it achieves that with zero effort on part of app
developer. 

 
If that’s what you want, then we have xdg-open for that
<https://askubuntu.com/questions/1279623/what-is-xdg-open>.
 

Which is non-POSIX.
Which was my point - there are not just "worthwhile" alternatives to
POSIX ways, but obviously superior alternatives. Both on POSIX-compliant
and on none-POSIX-compliant systems.

VISUAL and EDITOR are about editing text files, that’s all.