Requirements

Python 3.11 to 3.15 supported.

Installation

1. Install with pip:

   python -m pip install launch-editor-py

   The package imports as launch_editor.

Usage

Call launch_editor() with a filename, and optionally a line and column:

from launch_editor import LaunchEditorError, launch_editor

try:
    launch_editor("src/example.py", line=12, column=4)
except LaunchEditorError as exc:
    print(f"Could not open editor: {exc}")

API

Supported editors

Opening at a line and column is supported for:

• VS Code and its forks: Antigravity, Cursor, Trae, VSCodium

• JetBrains IDEs: AppCode, CLion, GoLand, IntelliJ IDEA, PhpStorm, PyCharm, Rider, RubyMine, WebStorm

• Atom, Emacs, Helix, joe, micro, nano, Neovim, Notepad++, Sublime Text, TextMate, Vim, Zed

Command line

Run python -m launch_editor to open a file from the command line, or check which editor would be used:

$ python -m launch_editor --guess
code
$ python -m launch_editor src/example.py:12:4

Full help:

usage: python -m launch_editor [-h] [--editor EDITOR] [--guess] [FILE]

Open a file in your editor.

positional arguments:
  FILE             The file to open, optionally followed by :LINE or
                   :LINE:COLUMN, like example.py:12:4.

options:
  -h, --help       show this help message and exit
  --editor EDITOR  The editor command to use, instead of guessing.
  --guess          Print the editor command that would be used, and exit.

Security

Web applications often use this package to open files from a browser, via an endpoint on a local development server. Such an endpoint runs a program, so protect it:

• Accept an identifier for a file the application already knows about, rather than an arbitrary path.

• Only accept POST requests, and check the Sec-Fetch-Site and Origin headers to reject cross-origin requests. Any website the user visits can send requests to localhost.

• Check the Host header is a local name, like localhost or 127.0.0.1, to prevent DNS rebinding attacks.

Filenames are passed to editors as absolute paths, so a name starting with - cannot be interpreted as an option.

On Windows, editors launched through batch files, such as VS Code’s code.cmd, run through cmd.exe, which has its own command line parsing. To prevent command injection, launch-editor-py quotes every argument and refuses to pass arguments containing ", %, !, or line breaks to them. UNC paths are also refused on Windows, like the npm package, to avoid leaking NTLM credentials to remote hosts—see its explanation.

Differences from the launch-editor npm package

This package was last compared against the npm package at version 2.14.2 (commit b533489), on 2026-10-28. Upstream main had no further changes to the package at that time.

It also includes the fix from upstream PR #163, unmerged at that time, so Cursor, Trae, and Antigravity open at the given line and column when detected running on Windows.

Additions:

• Opening at a line and column for Helix (hx), micro, nano, Neovim (nvim), and vi.

• Helix, micro, Neovim, and vi are treated as terminal editors, alongside Emacs, nano, and Vim.

• A command line interface, python -m launch_editor.

Changes:

• Errors raise LaunchEditorError, rather than calling an error callback and printing to the console. A missing file is an error, rather than being silently ignored. A GUI editor that exits with an error logs a warning to the launch_editor logger.

• launch_editor() takes the line and column as separate arguments, rather than parsing them from file:line:column. The command line interface still accepts file:line:column, but not file:// URLs.

• Opening a terminal editor while one is already open raises an error, rather than killing the open editor.

• VISUAL and EDITOR are split into arguments, so values like code --wait work. LAUNCH_EDITOR is still treated as a single command, like the npm package.

• On Linux, running editors are detected by exact process name, rather than by substring, so for example nvim isn’t detected as vim.

• On Windows, editor executables are run directly, rather than through cmd.exe. Batch file editors, like VS Code’s code.cmd, are still run through cmd.exe, with every argument quoted, rather than escaped with ^. Arguments containing ", %, !, or line breaks are refused for them, where the npm package refuses only % and line breaks.

• There’s no special handling for StackBlitz WebContainers.

License

MIT. This package is a port of the launch-editor npm package, Copyright (c) 2017-present Yuxi (Evan) You, which in turn derives from code in create-react-app, Copyright (c) 2015-present Facebook, Inc., both MIT licensed. See the LICENSE file for details.