I\'ve been searching with no results for an integration of bash inside vi, as featured in emacs; the problem is: I have vi open with 2 views, one open with :split
I just wrote myself a plugin for that purpose, see http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=4887
It won't work under Windows. On the other hand, it uses the Unix philosophy: two FIFOs, some tricky interaction between background processes. It doesn't require python or whatever. It allows to execute either a shell or any interpreter for a programming language. You can see a video of it with GNU APL working in a buffer here.
Like IPython, you work on your own buffer and see the output in a scratch buffer.
Since I spent much time on Stackoverflow studying the answers of the three following pages:
I will post the same answer on the three pages; I hope nobody will be hurt by this triple post, but really they ask something close and someone else could find my answer interesting for his/her own purposes by browsing the web and finding any of these three pages.
I'm afraid this feature isn't available in (presumably) Vim. It is on the list of possible new features. See here http://www.vim.org/sponsor/vote_results.php. At the current time of writing this is feature number two, add IDE features. If you want to vote for this feature you will need to sponsor Vim.
Have you tried looking for third-party Vim plugins? Conque Shell looks like it might do the job.
I use VIM in conjunction with tmux, which handles window splits very well. I just transitioned to this workflow from a combination of terminal and GVIM, though, and I encountered your question in looking for a piece missing from my old workflow.
I could run GVIM from the command line with the "--servername" flag and add files to that window with the "--remote-tab" flag. Now that I'm living entirely in the terminal with tmux, I don't seem to have the same option, so BBW. :/
As a new (and maybe better) answer, may I suggest you to have a try to the amazing neovim fork of vim? It is a newer project; I tried it myself and found no compatibility issue with vim (including the use of sophisticated plugins) and it has exactly what you are asking for.
neovim now support terminal emulation. More details at help nvim-terminal-emulator
in nvim