Question

I want to have my .bashrc detect if running emacsclient would work in lieu of running emacs. Basically:

if emacs_server_is_running; then
    EDITOR=emacsclient
    VISUAL=emacsclient
else
    EDITOR=emacs
    VISUAL=emacs
fi

What would I put in the emacs_server_is_running function to accomplish this aim?

Answer 1

You’re making this too hard. From the the emacsclient(1) man page:

-a, –alternate-editor=EDITOR

if the Emacs server is not running, run the specified editor instead. This can also be specified via the `ALTERNATE_EDITOR’ environment variable.

If the value of EDITOR is the empty string, then Emacs is started in daemon mode and emacsclient will try to connect to it.