Hi I have a situation as
I have a writing a shell script where I have to pass input to the vim.
Explaining in detail
Here I have already written shell script that I cannot changed. Here is the code for it.
sudo vim /mnt/etc/{hosts,hostname,ports}
due to this hosts file is opened we can go manually next to the hostname file by :n and similar for the ports file.
But I have to perform same operation from my .sh file.
Also I have to edit the ports file and after completing it I have to save and quite it through :wq command.
How can I do it?
Alternatives
Unless you really need special Vim capabilities, you're probably better off using non-interactive tools like sed
, awk
, or Perl / Python / Ruby / your favorite scripting language here.
That said, you can use Vim non-interactively:
Silent Batch Mode
For very simple text processing (i.e. using Vim like an enhanced 'sed' or 'awk', maybe just benefitting from the enhanced regular expressions in a :substitute
command), use Ex-mode.
# Unix
vim -T dumb --noplugin -n -es -S "commands.ex" "filespec"
Attention: Vim will hang waiting for input if the "commands.ex"
file doesn't exist; better check beforehand for its existence! Alternatively, Vim can read the commands from stdin. You can also fill a new buffer with text read from stdin, and read commands from stderr if you use the -
argument.
Full Automation
For more advanced processing involving multiple windows, and real automation of Vim (where you might interact with the user or leave Vim running to let the user take over), use:
vim -N -u NONE -n -c "set nomore" -S "commands.vim" "filespec"
Here's a summary of the used arguments:
-T dumb Avoids errors in case the terminal detection goes wrong.
-N -u NONE Do not load vimrc and plugins, alternatively:
--noplugin Do not load plugins.
-n No swapfile.
-es Ex mode + silent batch mode -s-ex
Attention: Must be given in that order!
-S ... Source script.
-c 'set nomore' Suppress the more-prompt when the screen is filled
with messages or output to avoid blocking.