18
votes
Accepted
Is it possible to pipe vim commands to vim?
To insert the string "hello" on the first line of the file j, you could type in your shell the following command:
vim +"1 | put! ='hello'" j
:1 moves the cursor to the first line of the buffer
:put! ...
- 6,706
16
votes
Accepted
Experimenting with vim/gvim in "virgin" mode
From Vim FAQ 2.5:
vim -u NONE -U NONE -N -i NONE
This starts Vim in nocompatible mode (-N), without reading your
viminfo file (-i NONE), without reading any configuration file (-u
NONE for ...
- 6,600
11
votes
Is it possible to pipe vim commands to vim?
Here is a way you can use normal-mode commands, rather than just ex commands, to edit a stream presented to Vim from stdin. This isn't a very useful example, but it illustrates the techniques involved....
- 6,284
10
votes
Accepted
How do I introduce a "light mode", in which not all plugins are loaded?
There are (at least) two possibilities:
use env:
EDITOR='/usr/bin/env VIM_LIGHT_MODE=1 vim'
use vim with another initialization file, say .vimrc-light:
EDITOR='/usr/bin/vim -u ~/.vimrc-light'
- 216
10
votes
Accepted
Why won't vim source my .vimrc file
Expanding on @mMontu's answer; Vim hunts for initialization in order of that list till it finds one. Since the $VIMINIT variable take precedent to the .vimrc file, it satisfies the search and any ...
- 1,192
9
votes
Terminal borked after invoking Vim with xargs
Besides reset, you can try:
stty sane
which should also make your terminal usable again.
See here for explanations.
And somehow this can be considered a vim misbehavior, at least Neovim doesn't ...
- 193
8
votes
Why won't vim source my .vimrc file
You probably misunderstood the documentation:
c. Four places are searched for initializations. The first that exists
is used, the others are ignored.
Thus if you are using the VIMINIT, the ...
- 6,600
8
votes
Is there a vim command line option to edit last edited file?
For this purpose, I have definde the following alias in my shell:
alias lvim="vim -c \"normal '0\""
(l meaning last)
- 25.3k
8
votes
Terminal borked after invoking Vim with xargs
The reason is that xargs sets stdin to /dev/null, whereas vim needs stdin to be /dev/tty.
BSD xargs (e.g. Mac) solution:
echo -e 'file1\nfile2' | xargs -o vim
-o sets the stdin of xarg's child ...
- 910
7
votes
Can I open a file in an existing Vim instance from an external command?
While @craigp's answer is correct, I found it most convenient to simply add --remote-silent without worrying about server names,(this assumes you don't want to address named vim instances).
This will ...
- 3,683
7
votes
Vim not sourcing files on startup
You can see what Vim does on startup with vim -V. Does it touch the file? Is there any errors?
Safe for errors, my only guess is that filename contains non-ASCII character that looks like "c"; you ...
7
votes
Accepted
How can I make sure all buffers end up as tab or force remaining buffers into tabs?
The documentation for this feature can be found at :help -p:
Open N tab pages. If [N] is not given, one tab page is opened for every file given as argument. The maximum is set with 'tabpagemax' ...
- 31.3k
6
votes
Accepted
Vim not sourcing files on startup
Here is what worked for me:
First opening vim normally and doing :scriptnames showed that, in fact, my ~/.vimrc was sourced. Other scripts were just overridding my indent settings.
Moving just the ...
- 199
6
votes
Accepted
How do I open multiple files from find each in a separate tab in vim?
vim -p `find . -name '*.txt'`
Putting the find command between backticks executes find before running the full command and the results replace what's between the backticks. So before running the ...
6
votes
Accepted
Call vim command from shell, and suppress output while it operates
I successfully used this command in a non-interactive way, but you have to specify the file containing the Plug calls:
vim -E -s -u "$HOME/.vimrc" +PlugInstall +qall
You might want to read more on ...
- 1,606
5
votes
How do I tell if Vi or Vim is installed on my Linux distribution?
Quick command to tell if it's vi or vim
vi -h
this will display the help info in my case :
$ vi -h
VIM - Vi IMproved 7.4 (2013 Aug 10, compiled Aug 7 2016 16:03:11)
[... skip other info ...]
So ...
- 51
5
votes
Accepted
Is there a vim command line option to edit last edited file?
An heavy solution: the sessions
Another possible option is to use the sessions mechanism:
First your vim version has to be compiled with the +mksession option. (Use :echo has('mksession') to check ...
- 49.3k
5
votes
How do I open multiple files from find each in a separate tab in vim?
find "$PWD" -name '*.txt' -exec vim -p {} +
- 205
5
votes
Is it possible to pipe vim commands to vim?
I have found the method of taking the output of a program as redirected from sub-shell to be very easy:
vim <( program )
Example:
vim <( grep -nH hello myFile.cpp )
vim <( find . -name ...
- 151
5
votes
Accepted
How to comment a line directly from bash using vim?
You can use:
vim +'normal! 2GI;' +'x' path/to/your/file
The + parameter allows to execute a command after opening the buffer.
The first command normal! 2GI; goes to line 2 and add a ; at the ...
- 49.3k
5
votes
How to detect whether Vim has been invoked by another shell command?
I don't know how reliable it is but I found how to get the PID of the parent of a process here:
ps -o ppid= -p <pid of the process>
And how to get the name of a process from its PID here:
ps -...
- 6,118
5
votes
Accepted
How to detect whether Vim has been invoked by another shell command?
Since vipe, git commit (and many other programs which invoke an editor) use the VISUAL and EDITOR variables (unless you specify an editor for git with git config core.editor), you can use that ...
- 24.7k
5
votes
Accepted
Using the ex mode command line (-c), how would I insert text?
The documentation for -s in Ex mode :help -s-ex states:
To be used when Vim is used to execute Ex commands from a file instead of a terminal.
So it seems the correct approach is to save your ...
- 31.3k
5
votes
How can I read a command-line argument in vimrc?
Vim version 8.1.2233 adds the read-only variable v:argv, which can be used to parse the command line arguments given to Vim.
- 25.3k
4
votes
Is it possible to pipe vim commands to vim?
I had the exact same desire as you: I wanted to write normal vim commands and have those edit a pipeline stream. I was disappointed by the difficulty of using normal vim in this way (so many flags!), ...
- 141
4
votes
Accepted
How can I suppress feedback when calling vim with certain commands?
Use :silent to suppress the output of the command.
vim +'silent 0,/^$/g/^\(Cc\|Bcc\|Reply-To\): $/d' /tmp/test
- 10.9k
4
votes
Is there a vim command line option to edit last edited file?
The last file should be at the top of the jumplist, which you can visit with CTRL-O.
Another way around your bash issue, related to muru's comment, is with the reverse-search-history CTRL-R.
- 446
4
votes
Accepted
How to use a specific vimrc file and still load the usual files?
A simple/hacky workaround for this is to use -u to point to a vimrc that uses so (abbreviated version of source) to read the vimrcs you want to load in the order in which you want to load them. For ...
- 156
4
votes
Accepted
Read from standard input and close if empty
Here is a "vim only" solution:
echo '' | vim - +'exe !search(".")?"quit!":""'
It is not perfect because a) doesn't distinguish between empty (0 bytes) and newline only b) the screen flash and c) the ...
- 13.9k
3
votes
Is there a vim command line option to edit last edited file?
Another possible alias:
alias lvim="vim -c':e#<1'"
- 39.1k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible