How can I visually select, then execute shell commands directly in vim?

Question

When writing bash scripts in vim, it would be useful to be able to selectively run only a few lines from the script, e.g. if I have some script

#! /bin/bash

# more commands

mkdir /tmp/test_dir
echo "some output to STDOUT"
touch /tmp/test_dir/new_file

# more commands

say I just want to execute this part of the script

mkdir /tmp/test_dir
echo "some output to STDOUT"
touch /tmp/test_dir/new_file

how can I highlight and execute it in vim? I have tried

v, select target text, :

which gives a prompt with :'<, '>

then tried :! w

but its not working properly.
I dont need to write the STDOUT of the shell commands to a file or anything, but I would like to be able to at least see the output.

There is a Vim module called QuickRun that can do the same thing and give you the result in a split. It can execute the entire buffer or only part of it. https://github.com/thinca/vim-quickrun/blob/master/doc/quickrun.txt — Dan Lowe, Sep 18 '15 at 13:37

edi9999 · Accepted Answer · 2015-09-18T12:39:36.357

6

From the answer of pacholik, you can extrapolate:

in visual mode, hit : and write w !bash

so that your whole command is :'<,'>w !bash

You will get the output as a result (but it won't change the file

If you remove the w , it will instead replace the line by the output of the buffer.

I have for example mapped r to "run command" in visual mode.

Like this:

vnoremap r :w !bash<cr>

I also have this in normal mode (to run the current line), with yr (you run)

nnoremap yr :.w !bash<cr>

edited Sep 18 '15 at 12:39

answered Sep 18 '15 at 12:31

edi9999

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I have updated my answer to add a mapping – edi9999 Sep 18 '15 at 12:39

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 18 '15 at 17:18

You can use Quickrun plugin : http://vimawesome.com/plugin/quickrun-vim

It can run many languages on the fly (bash, python, c++...), and you can run only a selected area.

Everything you need is :

Set the filetype of your file (normally it's automatically detected, unless you created a new file, in this case just do for example : :set ft=sh for bash)
Select a part of your file with V.
Run :'<,'>QuickRun

The output opens in a new window. You can tweak the plugin on many points, see the help.

How can I visually select, then execute shell commands directly in vim?

2 Answers2