CODEWITHSUNDEEP
vim
showkey
showkey

Reputation: 318

what is the meaning of \ | in a map vim command?

Here is a map command.

nnoremap <F5> :w\|!R %<CR>

1.what is the meaning of \ here?
2. does | mean pipe ?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 230

Answers (1)

Ingo Karkat
Ingo Karkat

Reputation: 172758

The | character separates two Ex commands, see :help :|. It's like ; in programming languages like C and Java. It has nothing to do with pipes; Vim hasn't that concept (which is typically found in shells).

It is escaped here so that the entire command sequence belongs to the mapping; i.e. it maps to :w|!R %<CR>. Without escaping, Vim would execute the following instead:

:nnoremap <F5> :w
:!R %<CR>

Note that you can also write <Bar> (cp. :help key-notation) instead of \|, and the former is more frequently used.

Upvotes: 7

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