On Mon, Jan 19, 2026 at 08:16:28PM +0000, Stuart Henderson wrote:
> well, &editor is obviously not set directly by that el_set.
> 
> if el_get() returns failure before it sets &editor (for whatever
> reason), editor contains garbage, so dereferencing that won't do
> anything good.
> 

I don't follow what you're telling me here.  If your concern is the
"editor" variable not to be initialized, we can do the following:


Index: sftp.c
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvs/src/usr.bin/ssh/sftp.c,v
diff -u -p -u -p -r1.247 sftp.c
--- sftp.c	13 Oct 2025 00:54:29 -0000	1.247
+++ sftp.c	19 Jan 2026 21:08:59 -0000
@@ -2204,6 +2204,7 @@ interactive_loop(struct sftp_conn *conn,
 	char *remote_path;
 	char *dir = NULL, *startdir = NULL;
 	char cmd[2048];
+	const char *editor = "emacs";
 	int err, interactive;
 	EditLine *el = NULL;
 	History *hl = NULL;
@@ -2220,7 +2221,7 @@ interactive_loop(struct sftp_conn *conn,
 		el_set(el, EL_HIST, history, hl);
 
 		el_set(el, EL_PROMPT, prompt);
-		el_set(el, EL_EDITOR, "emacs");
+		el_set(el, EL_EDITOR, editor);
 		el_set(el, EL_TERMINAL, NULL);
 		el_set(el, EL_SIGNAL, 1);
 		el_source(el, NULL);
@@ -2239,6 +2240,11 @@ interactive_loop(struct sftp_conn *conn,
 		el_set(el, EL_BIND, "\\e\\e[D", "ed-prev-word", NULL);
 		/* make ^w match ksh behaviour */
 		el_set(el, EL_BIND, "^w", "ed-delete-prev-word", NULL);
+
+		/* Vi command mode */
+		el_get(el, EL_EDITOR, &editor);
+		if (editor[0] == 'v')
+			el_set(el, EL_BIND, "^[", "vi-command-mode", NULL);
 	}
 
 	if ((remote_path = sftp_realpath(conn, ".")) == NULL)