terminal api not working on gvim

Question

vim 8 support terminal, and has a api to let command in terminal to communicate back to vim.

For example:

In vim, define function like

" .vimrc
let g:cnt = get(g:, 'cnt', 0)
func! Tapi_Command_finish(bufnum, arglist) abort
    let g:cnt += 1
endfunc " Tapi_Command_finish

open a terminal buffer, run command

printf '\033]51;["call","Tapi_%s", ["%s"]]\007' Command_finish

then go back to vim, :echo g:cnt, 1 will be echoed, demonstrate function Tapi_Command_finish being called.

This works in linux, but when i tried on windows gvim 8, it did not work.

I search around, some say cmd do not support ansi escape sequence. (not sure if \033]51... is ansi escape sequence or not.)

The question:

Is there a way to use terminal api on windows gvim?

== EDIT == (The echo part)

Below are 3 ways I can thought of to reproduce the echo part.

• 1 cat file approach

under posix shell, eg, cygwin

printf '\033]51;["call","Tapi_%s", ["%s"]]\007' Command_finish > xx

and cp or scp to current directory. then in terminal buffer

type xx

• 2 use python

create file yy.py, with content

print('\033]51;["call","Tapi_%s", ["%s"]]\007' % ("Command_finish",""))

then in terminal buffer, run

python yy.py

• 3 use echo

not tried, since I don't know how to reliably send '\033'.

Of the 3 ways, both 1 & 2 works on cygwin.

Answer 1

So :help terminal-communication lists term_sendkeys(), then the JSON API you can access with the escape sequence, then finally:

Use the client-server mechanism. This works on machines with an X server and on MS-Windows.

I'm not sure if that's meant to say that the other mechanisms will not work on MS-Windows, but at least they're saying this one should work there.

Then :help terminal-client-server describes that in more detail. You need to have your Vim instance register a server name (which it might do automatically, but you might need to do yourself.) Then, when you open a new :terminal, the server name will be available in an environment variable, $VIM_SERVERNAME (I believe this will be the case in cmd.exe as well, though probably it will be %VIM_SERVERNAME% there.)

From there, you can call a gvim --remote command, to either open a file on that Vim server, or to actually evaluate an expression or send keystrokes to be executed.

The exame from the help page, opening a file:

vim --servername $VIM_SERVERNAME --remote +123 some_file.c

But you'll probably want to look into :help --remote-expr (and possibly --remote-send as well.)

Note that this mechanism is a lot more powerful than the JSON API, since you can use it to evaluate arbitrary expressions, call arbitrary functions, send keystrokes. It's also synchronous and bidirectional, since you can evaluate expressions and get their result from the command running on the terminal.

On the other hand, it's heavier (need to invoke the Vim binary), less portable and might require some setup (ensuring the server is running and has a server name set.)

Having said that, you might want to consider that as an option, since it seems to be perfectly suited for the environment you're on.