How to use value under cursor in the shell command?

Question

Is it possible to use word under cursor in shell command? Say:

Elvis
^ cursor here

then
:r! echo <word_under_cursor> 

and get "Elvis" read in.

Answer 1

If you are typing interactively in the vim command line you can hit CtrlrCtrlw to include the current word or CtrlrCtrla to include the current WORD.

If you are writing a function or a command you can use expand('<cword>') or expand('<cWORD>') for the current WORD version.

Like in:

function! Hello()
  echo 'The current word is: ' . expand('<cword>')
  echo 'The current WORD is: ' . expand('<cWORD>')
endfunction

Answer 2

There is something to remember: Vim treats the commands differently. Some of them accept literals and cmdline-specials, so you can do

:r !echo <cword>

(or maybe :.!echo <cword>)

While others accept VimScript expressions, so it could look as, for example,

:put=expand('<cword>')

(or maybe :put=system('echo ' .. expand('<cword>'))

So the syntax of VimScript is heavily context-dependent.