Clever Geek Handbook

VimL: is it possible to output the output of an `exec` command, inside a variable?

I have several bash scripts and I need to get their output from a Vim script. Is it possible? If so, how?

+3


source to share


2 answers


To execute an external command and capture its output in a Vim variable, use system()

:

:let hostname = system('hostname')

The command is called through configured 'shell'

; as long as your Bash script has the correct shebang ( #!/bin/bash

) line, you should be fine.



If you end up wanting to insert the output into the current buffer, you can also use :read !{cmd}

directly:

:read !hostname
+7


source


As an alternative approach, note that the default signature for the operator is let

:

let {var} = {expr}

where the right side should be an expression. This means it let

cannot execute the command output execute

. In other words, try:

let {var} = {cmd}

will result in an error. A workaround is to use a command redir

that has the following syntax:

redir => {var}
{cmd}
redir end

See how this works in practice. Try first:



let somevar = echo "The current locale settings are: " . v:lang

returns error E15: Invalid expression . Now using

redir => somevar
echo "The current locale settings are: " . v:lang
redir end

the error disappeared and the variable was successfully allocated, which is confirmed by printing its value:

echo somevar

with output:

The current locale settings are: en_US.UTF-8
+1


source






More articles:


All Articles