systemctl edit command fails about with-editor HOT 4 CLOSED

The problem seems to be with systemctl:

$ systemctl --force --user edit foobar
"WITH-EDITOR:: 1: "WITH-EDITOR:: Syntax error: Unterminated quoted string
editor failed with error code 2.
Editing "/home/jonas/.config/systemd/user/foobar.service" canceled: temporary file is empty.
$ git commit --allow-empty
WITH-EDITOR: 13488 OPEN /home/jonas/.git/modules/emacs.d/modules/with-editor/COMMIT_EDITMSG
[gelpa 2d6f50c] test
$

Could you please try to find some documentation about what assumptions it makes about the value of $EDITOR? It looks like it some how chops of part of it. The value set by with-editor looks like sh -c '...'.

from with-editor.

In man systemctl, it just says:

ENVIRONMENT
       $SYSTEMD_EDITOR
           Editor to use when editing units; overrides $EDITOR and $VISUAL. If neither $SYSTEMD_EDITOR nor $EDITOR nor $VISUAL are present or if it is set
           to an empty string or if their execution failed, systemctl will try to execute well known editors in this order: editor(1), nano(1), vim(1),
           vi(1).

from with-editor.

Similar problem in Emacs Bug#9051/25082:

The documentation in environ(7) just says:

   EDITOR/VISUAL
          The user's preferred utility to edit text files.

However, I can't find a program that interprets it as a literal filename.

For example, Debian's sensible-editor editor-wrapper script does exactly
what I just did. If I set

export EDITOR='"spacey editor"'

it complains it can't find a program called: "spacey

If I do

 export EDITOR="emacsclient -c"

it works nicely. So it doesn't parse quotes specially. However, that's not
cross-platform.

from with-editor.

Similar problem in Emacs

But that is the only relation to the issue at hand. The problem in this case isn't that Emacs doesn't attempt to handle ALTERNATE_EDITOR as one would expect but that systemd, while trying to do so, actually fails to handle EDITOR/SYSTEMD_EDITOR as one would expect.

systemd can handle something like EDITOR="emacsclient -c". However if the value contains a quote or double quote, then it fails:

% SYSTEMD_EDITOR="sh -c \"echo huhu\"" systemctl --force --user edit foobar      
huhu": 1: huhu": Syntax error: Unterminated quoted string
editor failed with error code 2.
Editing "/home/jonas/.config/systemd/user/foobar.service" canceled: temporary file is empty.

% SYSTEMD_EDITOR="sh -c 'echo huhu'" systemctl --force --user edit foobar  
huhu': 1: huhu': Syntax error: Unterminated quoted string
editor failed with error code 2.
Editing "/home/jonas/.config/systemd/user/foobar.service" canceled: temporary file is empty.

There is nothing we can do here to work around this issue, so I am closing this.

from with-editor.