'-e' flag misbehave (MacOS)

[luigir-it]

Issue Description

On MacOS, I want to spawn a new ghostty window running vim. I used the following command:

ghostty -e vim /path/to/file.txt

When file is a fullpath and exists, a new window running vim file is spawn, then a new tab is created with the following output

/Users/luigi/file.txt; exit
Last login: Mon Jul 13 16:15:12 on ttys001
luigi@MacBook-Air-M2-di-Luigi ~ % /Users/luigi/file.txt; exit
zsh: permission denied: /Users/luigi/file.txt

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Ghostty failed to launch the requested command:

/usr/bin/login -flp luigi /bin/bash --noprofile --norc -c exec -l /bin/zsh

Runtime: 101 ms

Press any key to close the window.

It's like Ghostty recognize /path/to/file.txt as an executable and tries to execute it as a standalone command alongside vim.

Expected Behavior

Only vim must be parsed as an executable

Actual Behavior

1. vim /path/to/file is executed
2. /path/to/file is executed

Reproduction Steps

1. Open a terminal
2. type ghostty -e vim file where file exist relative to the cwd

Ghostty Logs

No response

Ghostty Version

Ghostty 1.3.1

Version
  - version: 1.3.1
  - channel: stable
Build Config
  - Zig version   : 0.15.2
  - build mode    : .ReleaseFast
  - app runtime   : .none
  - font engine   : .coretext
  - renderer      : renderer.generic.Renderer(renderer.Metal)
  - libxev        : kqueue

OS Version Information

MacOS Tahoe 26.5.2

(Linux only) Display Server

None

(Linux only) Desktop Environment/Window Manager

No response

Minimal Ghostty Configuration

command = /bin/zsh
notify-on-command-finish = unfocused
notify-on-command-finish-action = bell,notify
working-directory = inherit
click-repeat-interval = 500
shell-integration-features = cursor,sudo,title,ssh-env,ssh-terminfo,path
auto-update-channel = stable

Additional Relevant Configuration

No response

I acknowledge that:

• I have reviewed the FAQ and confirm that my issue is NOT among them.
• I have searched the Ghostty repository (both open and closed Discussions and Issues) and confirm this is not a duplicate of an existing issue or discussion.
• I have checked the "Preview" tab on all text fields to ensure that everything looks right, and have wrapped all configuration and code in code blocks with a group of three backticks (```) on separate lines.

[rhodes-b]

Like suggested by running the plain ghostty binary on macos sugguests nothing about it should work besides the +commands i think

open -na Ghostty.app --args -e vi file.txt
Is how you do it on macos

[luigir-it]

Like suggested by running the plain ghostty binary on macos sugguests nothing about it should work besides the +commands i think

I don't understand what you mean

open -na Ghostty.app --args -e vi file.txt Is how you do it on MacOS

Same behavior

[dbeecham]

At the bottom of ghostty --help:

On macOS, launching the terminal emulator from the CLI is not supported and only actions are supported. Use open -na Ghostty.app instead, or open -na ghostty.app --args --foo=bar --baz=quz to pass arguments.

However, I can confirm that the open -na trick does not work

[mitchellh]

#13748 Fixed