CODEWITHSUNDEEP
vimshellcommand-linepipe
ikwyl6
ikwyl6

Reputation: 900

Vim: Pipe selected text to shell cmd and receive output on vim info/command line

I want to pipe the selected text to a shell command and receive the one-line output from this shell command on the vim info/command line?

What I'm really trying to do: Pipe the selected text to a pastebin-type shell command and I want to receive the output of the shell cmd (which is the http link to the pastebin). Is this possible?

Upvotes: 76

Views: 49556

Answers (7)

esamatti
esamatti

Reputation: 18944

For multi line version you can do this after selecting the text:

:'<,'>:w !command<CR>

See the official Vim docs at :help :w_c.

You can map it to simple Visual mode shortcut like this:

xnoremap <leader>c <esc>:'<,'>:w !command<CR>

Hit <leader key>+c in visual mode to send the selected text to a stdin of the command. stdout of the command will be printed below vim's statusbar.

Real world example with CoffeeScript:

https://github.com/epeli/vimconfig/commit/4047839c4e1c294ec7e15682f68563a0dbf0ee6d

Upvotes: 144

papiro
papiro

Reputation: 2365

An imperative way to do it is to:

  1. yank your selection
  2. drop into command mode with :
  3. ! + paste the register in the command-line like <Ctrl> r "

So: y : ! <Ctrl> r "

Upvotes: 3

ZyX
ZyX

Reputation: 53604

Maybe you should use something like 

:echo system('echo '.shellescape(@").' | YourCommand')

Starting from some vim-7.4 version it is better to use

:echo system('YourCommand', getreg('"', 1, 1))

. This is basically the only way to keep NUL bytes untouched should they be present in the file. Passing @" in one or the other way will transform NUL bytes into NL (newline).

Upvotes: 7

Harry Lee
Harry Lee

Reputation: 992

@matias 's solution is not work well for me, because it seems shellescape will append \ to each line.

So I use sed to accomplish this, and it works just fine!

"dump selected lines
function! DumpLines() range
  echo system('sed -n '.a:firstline.','.a:lastline.'p '.expand('%'))
endfunction

com! -range=% -nargs=0 Dump :<line1>,<line2>call DumpLines()

Upvotes: 2

ZyX
ZyX

Reputation: 53604

Another answer:

function Pastebin() range
    let savedreg=@"
    silent execute a:firstline.",".a:lastline."yank"
    python import vim, subprocess
    python p=subprocess.Popen(["pastebin"], stdin=subprocess.PIPE, stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
    python p.stdin.write(vim.eval('@"'))
    let @"=savedreg
    python p.stdin.close()
    python retstatus=p.poll()
    python print p.stdout.read()
endfunction

Requires python support. Use it just like matias' function.

Upvotes: 1

Neg_EV
Neg_EV

Reputation: 2060

Simply highlight the lines using visual line select shift-v, the hit :! and type the command you wish to send the commands to. The resulting output will then replace your selected text.

When you type your command it will appear at the bottom as:

:'<,'>!somecmd

the '<,'> is indicating that the range you have visually selected will be passed to the command specified after the !

Upvotes: 48

matias
matias

Reputation: 565

I would do it like this:

Place this function in your vimrc:

function Test() range
  echo system('echo '.shellescape(join(getline(a:firstline, a:lastline), "\n")).'| pbcopy')
endfunction

This will allow you to call this function by doing:

:'<,'>call Test()

Then you can also map that like this (just under the function declaration in your vimrc):

com -range=% -nargs=0 Test :<line1>,<line2>call Test()

So you can call the function doing this:

:'<,'>Test

Note: :<','> are range selectors, in order to produce them just select the pertinent lines in visual mode and then go to command mode (pressing the colon key)

Upvotes: 19

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