I am trying to pass result of which env to nano by this command nano < which env, but it seems, that I didn't understand the whole concept.
When I execute this I assume that: which env STDOUT will go to the nano STDIN. So this will equal to nano /some/path. But, apparently, I am wrong.
Also I tried which env | nano with same purpose, but output was:
Received SIGHUP or SIGTERM
Can somebody clarify this?
nano, like most text editors, expects a file name to edit as its command-line argument, not as standard input.
$ which env | nano # pass as standard input, does not work $ nano "$(which env)" # pass as command-line argument, works So it's not working because that's not how nano expects to be used.
With some editors (apparently not your version of nano), you can use:
$ which env | some-other-editor - # note hyphen as file name to edit standard input as text (you'd be editing a document with the string "/usr/bin/env", not the program /usr/bin/env itself).
Also, if you want to change delimited names on standard input into arguments, xargs will do that for you.
PS: which doesn't always do what you want, consider command -v instead. For details, see Why not use "which"? What to use then?
which env | nano -, where-means stdin.nano <(which env)envin your system is something editable by nano (it's a 64-bit Mach executable on mine, so I don't really want to risk corrupting it), so I substituted thecdcommand andnano $(which cd)does what you are expecting, at least on OSX.nanowhich env``, but also I hoped for a little bit more detailed answer with explanation how it works and why my solution does not.