# VSCode setting for setting editor (for use with @edit)
**URL:** https://discourse.julialang.org/t/vscode-setting-for-setting-editor-for-use-with-edit/75716
**Category:** VS Code
**Created:** [February 3, 2022, 10:20am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/vscode-setting-for-setting-editor-for-use-with-edit/75716 "2022-02-03T10:20:39Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@albheim](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/albheim)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2022, 10:20am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/vscode-setting-for-setting-editor-for-use-with-edit/75716/1 "2022-02-03T10:20:39Z")
I wanted julia to automatically figure out and set the editor for use with `@edit` depending on if I was in a terminal (use vim) or if I was in vscode julia repl (use vscode).
I saw that in julia vscode settings there is a part about
> Julia: Editor
> Command to open files from the REPL (via setting the `JULIA_EDITOR` environment variable). Defaults to `code` / `code-insiders` if unset.
so I added the line `"julia.editor": "code"` to my `settings.json` while having `ENV["JULIA_EDITOR"]="vim"` in my `startup.jl` and expected this to mean that in a standalone terminal I would get vim while in vscode julia repl it would overwrite this and set it to code. But it seems like both are just opening in vim still, and checking `ENV["JULIA_EDITOR"]` in the vscode repl it shows vim, so I guess I misunderstood how this works?
I came up with some simple workaround using my `startup.jl` which just checks if there are any vscode related env vars and if so we set editor to vscode, otherwise it is vim.
```julia
if isempty(filter(contains("VSCODE"), keys(ENV)))
ENV["JULIA_EDITOR"] = "vim"
else
ENV["JULIA_EDITOR"] = "code"
end
```
This seems to work fine locally, but I also work on remote instances quite a bit where my `startup.jl` isn’t always present.
On remote instances it seems like it is not working at all even if it seems to set the editor to some default value that seems reasonable, but ignoring my setting `"julia.editor": "code"` (which might have been wrong here, but still it is ignored?).
```julia
julia> @edit 1+1
julia> /opt/julia-1.6.5/share/julia/base/int.jl:1
# This file is a part of Julia. License is MIT: https://julialang.org/license
^
SyntaxError: Invalid or unexpected token
at wrapSafe (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:979:16)
at Module._compile (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:1027:27)
at Object.Module._extensions..js (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:1092:10)
at Module.load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:928:32)
at Function.Module._load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:769:14)
at Function.executeUserEntryPoint [as runMain] (internal/modules/run_main.js:72:12)
at internal/main/run_main_module.js:17:47
julia> ENV["JULIA_EDITOR"]
"\"/home/ubuntu/.vscode-server/bin/899d46d82c4c95423fb7e10e68eba52050e30ba3/node\""
```
I assume that has to do with it not being a “real” installation or something, just some remote node, but if it was possible to make this work it would be convenient.
Have I gotten the wrong setting, is it called something else than `julia.editor`? How am I supposed to figure out the exact name in general, the text doesn’t mention what the name is?
---
### Author:  [@TI36XPro](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/TI36XPro)
#### Post date: [February 6, 2022, 1:32am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/vscode-setting-for-setting-editor-for-use-with-edit/75716/2 "2022-02-06T01:32:32Z")
I am using Windows Subsystem for Linux 1 (WSL1) and VSCode. I was getting the same error you show above any time I tried to use `@edit` in the REPL started from the integrated terminal. Also, when I was trying to right-click on the flame graph output of `ProfileView`. I just added `"julia.editor": "code"` to my `settings.json` and now it is working.
---
### Author:  [@albheim](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/albheim)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2022, 10:20am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/vscode-setting-for-setting-editor-for-use-with-edit/75716/3 "2022-02-15T10:20:48Z")
Realised that the `"julia.editor": "code"` setting was run before the `startup.jl` script, which I guess makes sense. This meant that `ENV["JULIA_EDITOR"]` was set to `code` first, but then `startup.jl` overwrote it with vim.
I instead set my system editor (`EDITOR` and `VISUAL` in linux) to be vim, and didn’t set anything in `startup.jl` or VSCode. This seem to result in the same behaviour as the manual `if ... else ...` in the `startup.jl`, but feels cleaner.
I also realised that the problem on ssh remotes was a [known bug](https://github.com/julia-vscode/julia-vscode/issues/2216), so just have to hope it gets fixed 🙂