CODEWITHSUNDEEP
vimneovim
Alex
Alex

Reputation: 2778

Kill a process on file save

I am trying to tell neovim to kill sxhkd and run sxhkd after I close its config file (sxhkdrc). This is what I have in my init.vim

autocmd BufWritePost *sxhkdrc pkill sxhkd; setsid sxhkd

I get the following error

"sxhkdrc" 9L, 136C written
Error detected while processing BufWritePost Autocommands for "*sxhkdrc":
E492: Not an editor command: pkill sxhkd; setsid sxhkd
Press ENTER or type command to continue

I can run pkill sxhkd; setsid sxhkd in the terminal without error, but for some reason my init.vim file does not know how to execute this command.

What can I do to kill a processes, such as sxhkd, when I save its config file?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 396

Answers (1)

Rich Churcher
Rich Churcher

Reputation: 7664

When executing an external command from inside Vim, we use the ! prefix to run the command in a non-interactive shell. You can test this by executing :!ls for a quick demonstration.

In your case, Vim is informing you that it doesn't understand the command you're giving it. Which is fair enough: it's not an editor command, it's a command designed to be executed from the terminal. You probably want:

autocmd BufWritePost *sxhkdrc !pkill sxhkd; setsid sxhkd

Edit: Alex points out in comments that sxhkd is a daemon, so backgrounding it with & would make more sense:

autocmd BufWritePost *sxhkdrc !pkill sxhkd && setsid sxhkd &

Upvotes: 1

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