4 ms·

One of Vim’s strengths is that it starts lightning fast, so starting Vim from the terminal is trivial. With a modern, 256-color terminal like iTerm2 or Gnome Te

One of Vim’s strengths is that it starts lightning fast, so starting Vim from the terminal is trivial. With a modern, 256-color terminal like iTerm2 or Gnome Terminal, it will even look like gVim. But the best part is that you can drop into the command line at any time with Ctrl-Z, which suspends Vim, and your working directory is where you left off. Is there any reason to do this instead of !sh within Vim to drop into a shell?

dhimes 14y ago
IIRC, !sh starts a new shell- so it depends on your context I suppose.
- brown9-2 14y ago
  I think this is the explanation, I usually only find myself wanting to temporarily "stop" Vim and do something on the shell for quick one-off commands that are fine in a subshell - not to keep a backgrounded Vim instance around for longer than that. The blog author seems to have a different use in mind.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - statico 14y ago
    That's pretty much it. See above comments regarding context.
niggler 14y ago
You end up creating a new session each time when you do !sh. backgrounding Vim lets you use the same shell instance. The other issue I have in general with the ! form is that some applications mess up osx vim. For example, try dropping into a node session (!node) and then quitting.
slurgfest 14y ago
have your terminal map Ctrl-Z to fg, and you can cycle in and out of the shell almost instantly from vim with that key.
- bsg75 14y ago
  As in Ctrl-z to background, and Ctrl-Z to fg back into vim from the shell?
  - danneu 14y ago
    I'm sure they mean `map fg <c-z>` in Vim so that `fg` from Vim lines up with `fg` from shell and you can repeat the same stroke to easily "toggle" Vim.
  - slurgfest 14y ago
    Yes.
- tomp 14y ago
  How can you do that? For me, this just doesn't work... bind '"\C-z":"fg\n"' bind -x '"\C-z":"fg"' echo 'Control-z: "fg\n"' >> ~/.inputrc If I replace "z" with "a", it works. C-z works otherwise, e.g. C-v C-z prints ^Z in shell, and C-z suspends programs (e.g. vim). Is it a bash thing or a terminal thing (I'm using iTerm2)?
  - ordinary 14y ago
    Try: set bind-tty-special-chars Off in your .inputrc, before you do the bind on C-z. The readline man page is a little misleading: bind-tty-special-chars (On) If set to On, readline attempts to bind the control characters treated specially by the kernel's terminal driver to their readline equivalents. Disabling it doesn't actually stop readline from binding those control characters. It just enables you to override those default readline binds. If the variable is set to On (the default), that's not possible.
    - 14y ago
johncoltrane 14y ago
You can do `:sh` instead of `:!sh`. Ctrl+z suspends Vim so that you are back to where you were when you started Vim. :sh starts a new shell in Vim's current directory. Both options have their use.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
statico 14y ago
:!sh will work, but it puts you in an entirely new context (environment and CWD). :sh is just plain awful and doesn't emulate anything correctly. I recommended ^Z/fg/bg because it's the fastest, easiest way to get to a good, functional shell if you're not using a multiplexer (tmux/iTerm2). If you map ^Z in your shell to "fg\n" then switching is lightning fast.

dhimes 14y ago

IIRC, !sh starts a new shell- so it depends on your context I suppose.

brown9-2 14y ago
I think this is the explanation, I usually only find myself wanting to temporarily "stop" Vim and do something on the shell for quick one-off commands that are fine in a subshell - not to keep a backgrounded Vim instance around for longer than that. The blog author seems to have a different use in mind.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- statico 14y ago
  That's pretty much it. See above comments regarding context.

niggler 14y ago

You end up creating a new session each time when you do !sh. backgrounding Vim lets you use the same shell instance. The other issue I have in general with the ! form is that some applications mess up osx vim. For example, try dropping into a node session (!node) and then quitting.

slurgfest 14y ago

have your terminal map Ctrl-Z to fg, and you can cycle in and out of the shell almost instantly from vim with that key.

bsg75 14y ago
As in Ctrl-z to background, and Ctrl-Z to fg back into vim from the shell?
- danneu 14y ago
  I'm sure they mean `map fg <c-z>` in Vim so that `fg` from Vim lines up with `fg` from shell and you can repeat the same stroke to easily "toggle" Vim.
- slurgfest 14y ago
  Yes.
tomp 14y ago
How can you do that? For me, this just doesn't work... bind '"\C-z":"fg\n"' bind -x '"\C-z":"fg"' echo 'Control-z: "fg\n"' >> ~/.inputrc If I replace "z" with "a", it works. C-z works otherwise, e.g. C-v C-z prints ^Z in shell, and C-z suspends programs (e.g. vim). Is it a bash thing or a terminal thing (I'm using iTerm2)?
- ordinary 14y ago
  Try: set bind-tty-special-chars Off in your .inputrc, before you do the bind on C-z. The readline man page is a little misleading: bind-tty-special-chars (On) If set to On, readline attempts to bind the control characters treated specially by the kernel's terminal driver to their readline equivalents. Disabling it doesn't actually stop readline from binding those control characters. It just enables you to override those default readline binds. If the variable is set to On (the default), that's not possible.
  - 14y ago

johncoltrane 14y ago

You can do `:sh` instead of `:!sh`. Ctrl+z suspends Vim so that you are back to where you were when you started Vim. :sh starts a new shell in Vim's current directory. Both options have their use.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

statico 14y ago

:!sh will work, but it puts you in an entirely new context (environment and CWD). :sh is just plain awful and doesn't emulate anything correctly. I recommended ^Z/fg/bg because it's the fastest, easiest way to get to a good, functional shell if you're not using a multiplexer (tmux/iTerm2). If you map ^Z in your shell to "fg\n" then switching is lightning fast.