How to run zsh aliased command from vim command mode?

Question

I have a bunch of really useful terminal programs which I use often while I am editing or writing. For example, dictionary is a popular one and I have aliased its usage to single character d in .zshrc file to save time.

While I am editing documentation pages in VIM, is there a way I can use .zshrc aliases in vim command mode and everything still works? Something like:

# alias defined in .zshrc
alias d="dictionary-program"

# VIM command mode
:!d <some_word>

How can I tell vim to lookup alias in .zshrc file before executing terminal commands from command mode?

Answer 1

One possible workaround is to move these things out of .zshrc. .zshrc is only sourced for interactive terminals, but .zshenv is sourced for any invocation of zsh (except with -f). Creating aliases in .zshenv will allow them to work when zsh is called by vim.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend this approach, because again - now any and every invocation of zsh has these aliases set. But, depending on how many tools you use that invoke zsh, how likely you think an unexpected collision is to happen with your aliases, how concerned you are about startup times for noninteractive shells, etc., it could be an acceptable workaround (and it does work).

This is briefly documented in the documentation under Startup Files.

Answer 2

The question originally asked about a solution for bash. I answered before I discovered that it was subsequently changed to be all about zsh. Fortunately, that original answer is very similar to the answer for zsh. And because several people found value in that answer (based on their upvotes) I've decided to address both shells rather than totally overwrite the bash information.

The 'shell' setting can be used to tell Vim how to start the shell used in terminal commands. The default value is the value of environment variable $SHELL or, if that's not found, just sh.

If you just set it to, say, /bin/zsh your startup file won't be picked up. You can tell the shell which startup file to use with the --rcs flag (bash: --rcfile). Alternatively, if you specify -i (for "interactive" shell) then the shell will read $ZDOTDIR/.zshrc or $HOME/.zshrc if ZDOTDIR is not set (for bash it's always $HOME/.bashrc). As it happens, you also need -i if you want to pick up aliases so that makes the choice clear.

Putting it all together, you can add something like this to your vimrc file:

" zsh
let &shell='/bin/zsh -i'

" bash
let &shell='/bin/bash -i'

However, something strange happens with zsh (bash works fine). Vim gets put in the background and you are dropped at your zsh prompt with this message:

zsh: suspended (tty output) vim

The workaround I came up with is to defer the setting of 'shell' by adding this to vimrc instead of the line above:

autocmd vimenter * let &shell='/bin/zsh -i'

Hopefully no other strange things happen but so far the testing I've done has gone well.

Answer 3

Not exactly what is asked in question but I found an amazing workaround from VIM documentation. No extra setup or whatsoever required.

1. Suspend and resume

Like most Unix programs Vim can be suspended by pressing CTRL-Z. This stops Vim and takes you back to the shell it was started in. You can then do any other commands until you are bored with them. Then bring back Vim with the "fg" command.

CTRL-Z
{any sequence of shell commands}
fg

You are right back where you left Vim, nothing has changed. In case pressing CTRL-Z doesn't work, you can also use ":suspend". Don't forget to bring Vim back to the foreground, you would lose any changes that you made!

Only Unix has support for this. On other systems Vim will start a shell for you. This also has the functionality of being able to execute shell commands. But it's a new shell, not the one that you started Vim from. When you are running the GUI you can't go back to the shell where Vim was started. CTRL-Z will minimize the Vim window instead.

2. Starting new shell

You can start a new shell this way:

:shell

This is similar to using CTRL-Z to suspend Vim. The difference is that a newnshell is started. Exit back to vim hitting CTRL+D