as I’m going through the process of learning vim, I’m discovering newfound powers. one of them being to execute commands from vim itself.

below examples might better explain some of them:

  1. want to see what files are in current directory? enter command mode(by typing :) and follow it by a bang(!). then do ls like you’d do in a terminal and press enter. this is not limited to just ls. you can enter any command that you can enter in terminal. for example: :! uname --operating-system (which will output GNU/Linux :))

  2. so you want to quickly save just a certain part of your file into another file? just select everything you need by entering visual mode(v) and do :w filename(actual command you’ll see would be '<,'>:w filename). verify it using 1.(i.e., :! cat filename.

  3. want to quickly paste another file into current one? do :r filename. it’ll paste its contents below your cursor.

  4. or maybe you want to paste results of a command? do :r !ls *.png.

vim is my ~ sweet ~ now. make it yours too.

  • lurch (he/him)
    13•10 months ago

    In Linux terminals, you probably could have pressed Alt+F2 or Ctrl+Alt+F2 (F2 could be other F-keys) and log in on a second terminal to recover (by reading the manual or killing it). Also, if bash already had job control back then Ctrl+Z would have suspended vi/vim to the background.

    I’m writing this, so people try it and maybe remember it, if they get stuck in some program. Doesn’t have to be vi. Maybe you just launched a long dd command and don’t want to end it, but want to look something up. These hints may help then.

    • @[email protected]
      14•10 months ago

      Help, how do I exit vi?

      Ctrl+Alt+F2
sudo killall vim

      Hmmm… never thought about that, honestly, but it makes sense

        • @[email protected]
          1•10 months ago

          Yeah, but in case I’m on a server, I’m going to free all the other trapped users, too! (Although I’d probably just terminate the ssh session then)

        • @thejodie
          2•10 months ago

          Luckily it shouldn’t do anything but error out on Unix boxes, as vim is not a valid process signal and their version of killall expects a signal argument (or just -)