Can I specify my shell for vim? I'm running OS X and have zsh installed via Homebrew and am using MacVim. When I type shell in MacVim, the shell opens up as bash. How can I have it open as zsh?
2 Answers
Add or change the following line in ~/.vimrc:
set shell=/path/to/zsh
answered May 24, 2011 at 16:29
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1This doesn't work for me. I specify
set shell=/bin/bashin ~/.vimrc, but when I execute:shelland typeecho $SHELLoutput is/bin/zsh. Apr 11, 2017 at 23:32 -
2@Daniel Kats, The
SHELLenv var doesn't indicate what shell is being used; it specifies what shell to use for interactive shells.– ikegamiJun 27, 2020 at 19:31
Not enough reputation for adding a comment, this is meant as a response to @BlackSheep comment in the accepted answer:
Despite the similar syntax, the set shell=/bin/bash does not apply to shell variables, but to variables that are internal to vi, so you can run a shell even if the system's shell for the active user is not a real one.
Also you can use :set shell=/bin/bash then :sh if you don't want to modify ~/.vimrc
chshto change your shell on your mac.chsh), yet MacVim was using/bin/shwhen I:shelled out. I thought it could be some weird app security / sandboxing thing with recent versions of macOS, but here is this question from 2011.