How to specify shell for vim?

Question

Can I specify my shell for vim? I'm running OS X and have zsh installed via Homebrew and am using MacVim. When I type shell in MacVim, the shell opens up as bash. How can I have it open as zsh?

Solution 1

Add or change the following line in ~/.vimrc:

set shell=/path/to/zsh

Solution 2

Not enough reputation for adding a comment, this is meant as a response to @BlackSheep comment in the accepted answer:

Despite the similar syntax, the set shell=/bin/bash does not apply to shell variables, but to variables that are internal to vi, so you can run a shell even if the system's shell for the active user is not a real one.

Also you can use :set shell=/bin/bash then :sh if you don't want to modify ~/.vimrc

Comments

[mkomitee]

vim will by default use your system configured shell. I suspect you're running zsh somewhere in your profile or your bash profile. Try running chsh to change your shell on your mac.

[TheDudeAbides]

@mkomitee I wish it did, and vanilla Vim, run from a terminal, does just fine with that. But straight-up, I have MacPorts' Bash set as my shell (verified with chsh), yet MacVim was using /bin/sh when I :shelled out. I thought it could be some weird app security / sandboxing thing with recent versions of macOS, but here is this question from 2011.

[Daniel Kats]

This doesn't work for me. I specify set shell=/bin/bash in ~/.vimrc, but when I execute :shell and type echo $SHELL output is /bin/zsh.

[elquimista]

:sh works for my case.

[ikegami]

@Daniel Kats, The SHELL env var doesn't indicate what shell is being used; it specifies what shell to use for interactive shells.