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Let's say I run the following command on a node.js file inside Vim:

:terminal node %"

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I'd like to continue executing commands on the newly opened window with a single command. But if I try executing :terminal node % | w! /tmp/file | e /tmp/file it doesn't work. Even though running first :terminal node % and then :w! /tmp/file | e /tmp/file manually it works.

Inside vimscript if I try using:

:terminal node %
:w! /tmp/file | e /tmp/file

It also doesn't work. What am I missing? How can execute commands on the new window opened by the terminal command?

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  • What kind of commands do you want to execute on that window, exactly? If you only want a buffer with the output of your node script, then you don't need :terminal at all and certainly not a temporary file. Just do :vnew|:read !node #. See this gist for a more elaborate solution.
    – romainl
    Commented Dec 8 at 10:15

1 Answer 1

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The command :terminal includes | in its arguments (so that you can run a pipeline). See :help :terminal:

            No Vim command can follow, any | is included in
            [command].  Use `:execute` if you must have a Vim
            command following in the same line.

The standard trick around this is to instead

:execute 'terminal node %' | write! /tmp/file | edit /tmp/file
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  • Even though it executes using the command like that it seems that it doesn't wait for the execution of terminal node % to finish to start executing the next commands. I've realized that using execute 'terminal node %' | sleep 1 | w! /tmp/file | e /tmp/file works filne for a simple console.log('Hello World') example. But not all codes will finish after 1 second. Is there any way of starting write! /tmp/file only after terminal node % finished its execution?
    – raylight
    Commented Apr 11, 2022 at 15:15
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    @raylight you get more programmatic control if you use the term_start or job_start functions
    – D. Ben Knoble ♦
    Commented Apr 11, 2022 at 16:42

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