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 th

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.