VISUAL, EDITOR, SUDO_EDITOR env vars fail with --switches

[nextgenthemes]

Bug report form

• I have done a basic search of the issue tracker to find any existing issues that are similar.
• I have checked that my version is at least the latest stable release available via my installation method.

Describe the bug

Long story short: this should not be necessary / automatic. When these variables are set as strings, as they just ARE. Nushell fails on them. Nushell expect a list of strings for commands with flags or subcommands. But in these cases It's not very intuitive

#env.nu

# Fix for broken editor integration in Nushell.
#
# Our environment exports VISUAL/EDITOR as a command plus arguments (e.g.
# "codium --wait"), which zsh splits implicitly but Nushell treats as a single
# program name. Nushell's built-in `config` command (and similar) expect the
# editor as a list like ['codium', '--wait'], so split on spaces and keep the
# command together with all its switches.
$env.EDITOR      = ($env.EDITOR? | default "nano"          | str trim | split row " " | where {|el| $el != "" })
$env.VISUAL      = ($env.VISUAL? | default "codium --wait" | str trim | split row " " | where {|el| $el != "" })
$env.SUDO_EDITOR = ($env.VISUAL? | default "codium --wait" | str trim | split row " " | where {|el| $el != "" })

How to reproduce

❯ $env.VISUAL = "codium --wait"

~ 
❯ config nu
Error: nu::shell::external_command

  × External command failed
   ╭─[repl_entry #10:1:1]
 1 │ config nu
   · ────┬────
   ·     ╰── `codium --wait` not found
   ╰────
  help: Failed to find the editor executable


~ 
❯ 

~ 
❯ $env.VISUAL = [ "codium" "--wait" ]

~ 
❯ config nu # works

Expected behavior

Nushell expect a list of strings for commands with flags or subcommands. But in these cases It's not very intuitive

Configuration

version | transpose key value | to md --pretty

key	value
version	0.114.2-nightly.7
major	0
minor	114
patch	2
pre	nightly.7
branch	nightly
commit_hash	c41a2b62abe465393be68734dcdc27273672b75e
build_os	linux-x86_64
build_target	x86_64-unknown-linux-musl
rust_version	rustc 1.95.0 (59807616e 2026-04-14)
rust_channel	1.95.0-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
cargo_version	cargo 1.95.0 (f2d3ce0bd 2026-03-21)
build_time	2026-07-18 03:35:58 +00:00
build_rust_channel	release
allocator	standard
features	default, lsp, mcp, network, plugin, rustls-tls, sqlite, static-link-openssl, trash-support
installed_plugins
experimental_options	example=false, dc-glob=false, reorder-cell-paths=true, pipefail=true, enforce-runtime-annotations=true, native-clip=false, cell-path-types=false

[weirdan]

A better way to handle it is with an $env.ENV_CONVERSIONS entry (see https://www.nushell.sh/book/environment.html#environment-variable-conversions)

[fdncred]

yup, it takes a list by design so it's not "broken". we could probably change it if we wanted to but this is how we made it.

[nextgenthemes]

You may call it a feature request then of you not consider it a bug.

I know it's not a POSIX comparable shell, but you also recommend to not use nu as a login shell for a good reason.

I do not think you should change how it's done inside nushell, I just think when nushell reads these values from the system or a parent shell it should just auto convert them. Because this is what people expect.

Did not know about $env.ENV_CONVERSIONS, maybe a default set of them that does things exactly like this?