Reputation: 318
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
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