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Well find, cal, and ls don't take input at all. And vi (well vim) in fact does. If you invoke it with a - for the file name argument, it will read standard inpu

Well find, cal, and ls don't take input at all. And vi (well vim) in fact does. If you invoke it with a - for the file name argument, it will read standard input into the buffer. I can't comment on emacs as I don't use it much.

wglb 8y ago
Ah, correct on that point. What about standard output? That is, can vi be used in a pipe?
- rmilk 8y ago
  I use vim as a visual pipe or pipe debugger with undo when I need to perform a series of transformations (grep/sort/cut/lookup/map/run other data tool). Obviously geared towards text files because it is vim. The ! command sends the selection through external command(s) as STDIN and then replaces the selection with STDOUT from the command(s). For example, grep or sort, but can be any command that works with pipes. Buffer is replaced with output (sorted file for example). Undo with U to go back to original data. Redo with R to go forward to transformed data. Command line history is available to add more commmands or correct when you type ! again. Edit a file. Select block (Visual mode shift-V) and type ! or use the whole file with gg!G command. Type in the commands you need to run. Vim also reads stdin if you give - as the filename, like “ls -l | vim -“ so you we can use it at the end of a pipe instead of redirecting to a file. Like I said, I use it as an interactive debugger to assemble pipelines and see the results. vi / vim filter commands: http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/change.html# http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/change.html#!
- flukus 8y ago
  With some redirection magic it can be made to, but I find that magic is always too much stuffing around to make it useful. Inside scripts though I like to pipe to vim and have it output to a file: pipeline | vim - +"file $mytempfile" Then if you quit vim without saving $mytempfile won't exist, if you save and quit it will and further processing can be done. I've got a view scripts like this to to things like viewing csv files after being piped through column, after saving they're converted back to csv.

wglb 8y ago

Ah, correct on that point. What about standard output? That is, can vi be used in a pipe?

rmilk 8y ago
I use vim as a visual pipe or pipe debugger with undo when I need to perform a series of transformations (grep/sort/cut/lookup/map/run other data tool). Obviously geared towards text files because it is vim. The ! command sends the selection through external command(s) as STDIN and then replaces the selection with STDOUT from the command(s). For example, grep or sort, but can be any command that works with pipes. Buffer is replaced with output (sorted file for example). Undo with U to go back to original data. Redo with R to go forward to transformed data. Command line history is available to add more commmands or correct when you type ! again. Edit a file. Select block (Visual mode shift-V) and type ! or use the whole file with gg!G command. Type in the commands you need to run. Vim also reads stdin if you give - as the filename, like “ls -l | vim -“ so you we can use it at the end of a pipe instead of redirecting to a file. Like I said, I use it as an interactive debugger to assemble pipelines and see the results. vi / vim filter commands: http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/change.html# http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/change.html#!
flukus 8y ago
With some redirection magic it can be made to, but I find that magic is always too much stuffing around to make it useful. Inside scripts though I like to pipe to vim and have it output to a file: pipeline | vim - +"file $mytempfile" Then if you quit vim without saving $mytempfile won't exist, if you save and quit it will and further processing can be done. I've got a view scripts like this to to things like viewing csv files after being piped through column, after saving they're converted back to csv.