vim command-line tricks
The following is a list of some useful ways to use vim
with the command-line.
vimhelp
Add the following to your .bashrc
:
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vimhelp() {
vim -c "help $1 | only"
}
This nifty command opens the vim
help page for its argument and makes it the
only active window. The -c
flag takes a list of commands and executes them.
vim-enchanced manpage (Credit).
You can color manpages using the LESS_TERMCAP_xx
variables, but I prefer a
neater way using vim
. Add the following to your .bashrc
:
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man() {
/usr/bin/man $@ | col -b | vim -R -c "set ft=man nomod nolist" -
}
Now when you type man grep
, the manpage is piped to col
which strips out
reverse and half-reverse line feeds, then pipes the output to vim
, which opens
the file in read-only mode (-R
), sets the filetype to man
, marks the file as
not modified and finally ensures that tab characters are not displayed as
ctrl-I
.
Now you have a syntax highlighted manpage with the power of vim
, such as searching and copying.