mongo shell edit query with external editor: strange chars in Windows

Question

I've added the line to my .mongorc.js:

var EDITOR = "C:\\Windows\\notepad.exe";

When I run edit q from mongo shell it opens notepad with the following content:

Same thing happens with vim. The editing works just OK, i.e. if I remove the line and write what I need, it's passed to shell properly.

Any ideas on how to get rid of that line?

Answer 1

As for the undefined part, the reason is that you have no content in what you are trying to edit.

If you follow the section as described in the FAQ:

Define a function myFunction

function myFunction() {}

Then edit with your editor:

edit myFunction

Everything will work as expected. So the problem was your q thingy was not defined, hence the output.

The other characters are likely a system code page issue. I'm not sure if interaction with the shell expects ANSI or whether UTF-8 is okay. But anything else or UTF-16 might cause the issue. Hard to tell without knowing what language setting you have, etc.