How to execute a bash command from the normal mode and send the output on a different buffer?

Question

I have a bash_file that operates on a latex file to produce a pdf.

#!/bin/bash
/usr/bin/pandoc/ filein.md -t beamer -o fileout.md ;
/usr/bin/pdflatex/ fileother.tex ;
/usr/bin/evince fileother.tex

If I execute in normal mode

! ./bash_file.sh

it works fine but I cannnot work in vim while I am viewing the pdf

I want to be in vim normal mode and have a command, that executes the .sh without disturbing my current buffer (so that I can keep working on the tex file). I want something that should work similar to leader-ll leader-lv commands in the vim latex-suite template.

How should I do this? Thanks :)

Answer 1

If you start vim in a folder which contains the file foo.sh with the following content:

#!/bin/bash

echo "Output of the bash script"

You can open a new buffer (:enew for example) and execute the script and get it's output in this new buffer with the following command:

:read ! ./foo.sh

Your new buffer will contain:

Output of the bash script

read executes a command and insert its standard output below the cursor and ! executes a command in the shell (here the command is ./foo.sh).

Of course if you use it often you can make it a command:

    command! MyCommand enew | read ! ./test.sh

Then :MyCommand will open the new buffer and read the output of your script into the new buffer.

See

• :h :read
• :h :!

Answer 2

Before you execute your command, run

:term

This will open a shell in a buffer window. You can then run commands there, and then while those commands are running ^W back to a normal window. This does, admittedly, make it a little annoying to send CTRL-W to that window; you need to press a period after your CTRL-W. You can get more help on various keys available there using

:help ctrl-w_.

You can run different things in the terminal window instead of your default shell, including the command you were wanting to run.