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I have Neovim installed on Windows. I use WSL for running Python and C code. So I'd like to map a key to get Neovim to run a shell command in WSL directly from the Neovim editor. But I seem to be running into an issue I haven't been able to fix on my own. When I run :!python3 %, this is the output I get:

enter image description here

I did try to solve this by myself, here's more information.

I added the following two lines to my init.lua.

vim.opt.shell='wsl.exe'
vim.cmd('set shellcmdflag="-c"')

If I input the :term command, a new WSL instance opens in the editor, in the same directory - just as expected. I know that the shebang is okay because from this newly opened terminal window both python3 code.py and ./code.py execute just as expected. The problem seems to be exclusively with the exclamation mark command.

Could I have some help with this? The end goal is a way to link Neovim key mappings to terminal commands, if there is some other (better?) way to do it.

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  • It seems that bash is try to execute the program named python3 code.py, which means the arguments it got from :! weren’t handled right somewhere. Can you share the values of the various shell and redirect options?
    – D. Ben Knoble ♦
    Commented Oct 29, 2023 at 21:36
  • I haven't added any shell and redirect options besides the ones I've mentioned. Are you looking for anything specific? If these are env variables, what commands can I run to show you what you need to see? Another anomaly I noticed - with the exclamation mark method, it seems like /bin/bash is being used. But with the :term method (which has no issues at all), running which bash tells me that /usr/bin/bash is being used. Is this a red herring or might it be related to the issue?
    – vvenk
    Commented Oct 30, 2023 at 5:50
  • I also fail to start commands with arguments on Neovim with WSL as a shell.
    – Vivian De Smedt
    Commented Oct 30, 2023 at 9:39
  • I found a workaround. I have updated the solution accordingly ;-)
    – Vivian De Smedt
    Commented Oct 30, 2023 at 9:53

1 Answer 1

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With gVim I would do:

set shell=wsl.exe
set shellcmdflag=
set shellquote=
set shellxquote=

With Neovim I suspect there is a weakness in the way arguments are passed to the spawned process.

The workaround I have found is:

Create a wsl.bat file in your path:

wsl.exe %*

set shell=cmd\ /c\ wsl.bat
set shellcmdflag=
set shellquote=
set shellxquote=
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3
  • You guys are absolute legends!! It worked. Quick question, could you break down the set shell= line? I gather the cmd bit at the beginning of the arguments tells Nvim to invoke cmd first, then call a bat file which inserts a wsl.exe before the commands, instructing cmd to invoke those commands with WSL...right? What does the /c do?
    – vvenk
    Commented Oct 30, 2023 at 21:14
  • I didn't had the time to dig into the code of Neovim and I should take the time to fill a big report but it seems that Neovim pass all the arguments as one argument a bit like if it was 'python3 yourscript.py' instead of python3 yourscript.py and wsl get confused. Maybe your trick could work. Worth trying :-) The /c make the cmd standard shell execute the command and return.
    – Vivian De Smedt
    Commented Oct 30, 2023 at 21:22
  • Thanks for the feedback :-)
    – Vivian De Smedt
    Commented Oct 30, 2023 at 21:23

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