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I am trying to redirect the output of a bash command into a new file.

If I try the pipe as below :

ls -la | vim

Bash shows me the errors :

Vim: Error reading input, exiting...
Vim: preserving files...
Vim: Finished.

I know that I can open Vim and then use :

:r !ls -la

But is there a way to do this in bash itself, so that Vim is opened and the output is pasted there automatically?

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7 Answers 7

Reset to default
200

You can use process substitution (this also works with applications that can't read from STDIN):

vim <(ls -la)

Or use vim's function to read from STDIN:

ls -la | vim -
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11
  • 4
    <(ls -la) is actually process substitution rather than command substitution.
    – Eliah Kagan
    Sep 2, 2014 at 1:32
  • 3
    I really like vim's option, it allows me to search, find and save the output easily from data dumps.
    – Josue Alexander Ibarra
    May 11, 2016 at 21:36
  • vim will warn of your buffer is not saved. You may pass -R or -c "setlocal buftype=nofile bufhidden=hide noswapfile" to avoid this.
    – Jérôme Pouiller
    Dec 11, 2020 at 12:24
  • This question/answer is the closest to what I've been trying to search on SO, but if anyone can help me: Is it possible to be using a shell (ie bash), and then turn my current shell buffer (ie, everything above my cursor) into a doc I can temp edit in vim? Even read only? For example ls somdir/ and then after it dumps output, i can search and yank from it? Much appreciated!!!
    – Evan Morrison
    Jan 28, 2021 at 6:17
  • @EvanMorrison This is a good question, why not asking it?
    – chaos
    Jan 28, 2021 at 6:27
54

You're really close on your own. You were just missing one character.

ls -la | vim -
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1
  • 17
    Well technically it's two characters. ;)
    – Cory Klein
    Oct 24, 2017 at 22:14
25

Here's another approach, hopefully to teach someone something new.

If you know that the command :r !ls -la works inside vim, you can do the following to open vim and make it run the command as soon as it opens, straight from bash:

vim -c ':r! ls -la'

This is the equivalent of opening vim then executing the command :r! ls -la. This should work with any vim command, where the command comes after the -c option.

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2
  • I like it. This results in a little cleaner launch of vim on my system (doesn't hang the bash terminal) but results in the output from git diff missing syntax highlighting. This may be a particularity of my system.
    – Tom Russell
    Mar 1, 2021 at 7:14
  • I meant, cleaner launch of gvim... And bash comes back with a carriage return.
    – Tom Russell
    Mar 1, 2021 at 7:57
15

You can tell vim to open stdin:

ls -la | vim -
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1

If your goal is simply to get the output into a text file then you don't need to invoke vim. Bash can do it alone with

ls -la > outputfile.txt
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1

setlocal buftype=nofile

This is a good option if you are going to create an alias to replace less:

seq 100 | vim +':setlocal buftype=nofile' -

Now you don't need to type the ! to quit.

Another option is:

seq 100 | vim +'nnoremap q :quit!' -

so you can exit with just q<enter>.

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1
  • Good idea. Definitely shorter than typing this long ! :)
    – kode
    Jun 21, 2017 at 15:04
1

I would like to add an option

ls -al | view -

view is a read-only version of vim(equivalent to vim -R)

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