vnoremap to sort highlighted lines by length not working as expected

Question

I found a command that would sort highlighted lines by their length and wanted to make a mapping for it so that I could avoid typing it every time.

vnoremap ,s :<C-U>'<,'> ! awk '{ print length(), $0 | "sort -n | cut -d\\  -f2-" }'<CR>

However, when I try to use the remapping, only the following is seen:

:'<,'> ! awk '{ print length(), $0

It abruptly stops at $0 and does not complete the rest of the command.

I don't know what I am doing wrong; any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

The mapping command, like most of the Vim commands, can be part of a list of commands | separated.

When executed the following line:

nnoremap mm :echo "foo" | echo "bar"

is equivalent to the script:

nnoremap mm :echo "foo"
echo "bar"

If you like the | to be part of the mapping it has to be escaped as \| or as <bar>.

Because mappings simulate keys, the mapping itself use the < escaping:

• <lt> stands for <
• <char-65> stands for A
• <C-s> stands for Ctrl-s
• <bar> stands for |
• ...