CODEWITHSUNDEEP
windowsshellvim
j.tran4418
j.tran4418

Reputation: 33

External commands from Vim are not recognized, including 'ls' and 'pwd'

I'm still learning vim and during my vimtutor session I wrote :!ls but it couldn't be found. I've also tried :sh which works fine but I can't figure out why using the bang symbol wouldn't

edit: I was wrong. ':sh' brings up the shell but ls and pwd still don't work with that instance of the shell

edit2: I've been using Powershell and realize now that ls and pwd are not commands available to cmd. I added

set shell=powershell.exe
set shellcmdflag=-c
set shellpipe=>
set shellredir=>

into _vimrc gleamed from this question: Vim with Powershell

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1697

Answers (2)

Ingo Karkat
Ingo Karkat

Reputation: 172590

You're confusing the "bang" added to commands like :w! and the separate :! command, which passes the remainder to the shell. (Also, many built-in commands like :ls and :pwd are named by common shell commands found on Unix / Linux.)

If you're on Windows, you simply don't have those common Linux commands like ls and pwd. (The equivalents would be dir and echo %CD%, resp.)

If you install a Unix emulation layer like the one provided by Cygwin or the GNU Win32 project, you'll get corresponding binaries (ls.exe) and can then invoke then (or even reconfigure Vim's 'shell' option to use such shell).

Upvotes: 2

Etan Reisner
Etan Reisner

Reputation: 80931

:! in vim runs the given command through the 'shell'.

On Windows this is cmd.exe. ls is not a valid command on Windows. As such :!ls will not work on Windows.

:!dir, on the other hand, will.

Upvotes: 1

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