Set a Shell in ViM

author: Nathan Acks

If the user shell is set to something non-standard in /etc/passwd, Vi and ViM may not be able to shell out with :shell or execute shell commands with !. This is because these apps are attempting to execute $SHELL (in the case of :shell) or $SHELL -c $COMMAND (in the case of !).

Fortunately, Vi and ViM can be set to override the default $SHELL using :set shell=/bin/bash.

(Exotic shells in /etc/passwd can also cause commands executed via ssh to fail for the same reason.)

• ssh works with my custom shell but can’t execute commands directly using ssh