CODEWITHSUNDEEP
vim
PonyEars
PonyEars

Reputation: 2254

Calling substitute() and expand() inside new command definition in Vim

I'm trying to define a new command in Vim that calls an external script with the name of the current file, but slightly modified. Here's how I defined the command:

:command MyNewCommand !/tmp/myscript.sh substitute(expand("%:p"), "-debug", "", 'g')

In other words, myscript.sh takes one parameter, which is the full pathname of the file being edited, with the string -debug in the pathname removed. My command definition doesn't work because rather than passing the pathname, Vim seems to pass to myscript.sh the entire string itself, beginning with the word substitute. How do I define the command to do what I want? Thanks :).

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1922

Answers (3)

ib.
ib.

Reputation: 28944

You can use the system() function to execute the script. Change the command definition as follows:

:command! MyNewCommand call system('/tmp/myscript.sh ' .
\   shellescape(substitute(expand('%:p'), '-debug', '', 'g')))

To see the output of the command, replace call with echo.

Upvotes: 3

RubenLaguna
RubenLaguna

Reputation: 24686

The generic approach is to build a string and then execute it. The problem in your command is that substitute(expand(... is not being evaluated and it's passed as is.

So in a generic example

command MyNewCommand OldCommand expand("%:p")

should be converted to

command MyNewCommand execute 'OldCommand '.expand("%:p")

That way MyNewCommand will just invoke execute with the expression 'OldCommand '.expand("%:p"). execute will evaluate the expression and therefore expand() will get evaluated to the filename and concatenated to 'OldCommand ' resulting in a string of the form 'OldCommand myfilename'. That string then gets executed as an Ex command by the same execute.

Upvotes: 1

ZyX
ZyX

Reputation: 53614

You can use solution similar to @ib's one, but with ! which will show you the output of the shell command (and will also handle case when expand('%:p') contains newlines (it can if FS is fully POSIX-compliant)):

command MyNewCommand execute '!/tmp/myscript.sh' shellescape(substitute(expand('%:p'), '-debug', '', 'g'))

Upvotes: 2

Related Questions