133

I am trying to redirect the output of a bash command into a new file.

If I try the pipe as below :

ls -la | vim

Bash shows me the errors :

Vim: Error reading input, exiting...
Vim: preserving files...
Vim: Finished.

I know that I can open Vim and then use :

:r !ls -la

But is there a way to do this in bash itself, so that Vim is opened and the output is pasted there automatically?

muru
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faizal
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7 Answers7

213

You can use process substitution (this also works with applications that can't read from STDIN):

vim <(ls -la)

Or use vim's function to read from STDIN:

ls -la | vim -
muru
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chaos
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62

You're really close on your own. You were just missing one character.

ls -la | vim -
Cris Holdorph
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25

Here's another approach, hopefully to teach someone something new.

If you know that the command :r !ls -la works inside vim, you can do the following to open vim and make it run the command as soon as it opens, straight from bash:

vim -c ':r! ls -la'

This is the equivalent of opening vim then executing the command :r! ls -la. This should work with any vim command, where the command comes after the -c option.

Alaa Ali
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15

You can tell vim to open stdin:

ls -la | vim -
iffy
  • 1,127
2

I would like to add an option

ls -al | view -

view is a read-only version of vim(equivalent to vim -R)

Mustapha-Belkacim
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2

setlocal buftype=nofile

This is a good option if you are going to create an alias to replace less:

seq 100 | vim +':setlocal buftype=nofile' -

Now you don't need to type the ! to quit.

Another option is:

seq 100 | vim +'nnoremap q :quit!' -

so you can exit with just q<enter>.

Ciro Santilli OurBigBook.com
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1

If your goal is simply to get the output into a text file then you don't need to invoke vim. Bash can do it alone with

ls -la > outputfile.txt
Jake Stewart
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