Pipe Vim buffer to stdout

Question

I\'d like to use Vim in the middle of a pipe. This existing post looks like what I\'d like to do, except I was hoping to do it without Python\'s help -- only with bash. [It it

Answer 1

You cannot simply put vim inside a pipe, because then Vim cannot display its UI.

ls | vim - | more # Does not work

One way to solve this is to use gvim -f - inside the pipe, as it opens in a separate window. You need to write the file via :w >> /dev/stdout and then :quit!.

Alternatively (and the only way in a console-only non-graphical environment), you could write your own script / function vimAndMore that takes the command that should be following vim in the pipe as an argument, and goes like this:

vimAndMore()
{
    TMPFILE=/tmp/pipecontents

    # Slurp stdin into the temp file.
    cat - > "$TMPFILE" || exit $?

    # Reconnect stdin to the terminal, so that Vim doesn't complain with "Warning:
    # Input is not from a terminal", and the terminal is kept intact.
    exec 0

And change the pipe to this:

ls | vimAndMore | more