Using terminal in tab to open a file in that same tab

Question

In Neovim it's good to have a terminal window open amongst the other windows (which are displaying regular buffers). Sometimes, in the terminal, I'll want to edit another file. Ordinarily you'd just vim filename but I'd like that file to be opened as another window in the same tab. Perhaps, for example, there some way of replacing the vim in vim filename so that this can be achieved?

It would be easier to do this than to use :e filename because in the terminal I might have changed folder to somewhere rather tedious to type.

Answer 1

I would just use a split, so it is effectively in the same "tab". You just have to type :split or :vsplit, depending on whether you want it split vertically or horizontally. you can then specify the file you want to open like this (say you want a vertical split) :vsplit e foo.txt

Answer 2

I wrote a plugin some time ago for Vim to enable client server communications without +clientserver.

https://github.com/laktak/vim-please

You can try if it works for NeoVim: install the plugin and run Please. In another terminal run ./please FILE (in the scripts folder). The FILE should be opened in the original Vim instance.

@justin suggested that nvr does the same for neovim:

It basically does two things:

    adds back the --remote family of options (see man vim)
    helps controlling the current nvim from within :terminal