VIM open file from within :shell command

Question

Lets say I issue :shell command from withing VI. Then I navigate to a directory and decide that I need to edit foo.txt file which I see there. Is there a way to return back to vi from the shell and have foo.txt opened for editing

Answer 1

Your question says vi, but your tag says vim. I don't know how to make the shell you invoke talk back to the parent Vim window, but in case the following does what you want anyway:

:E invokes Vim's file system navigator. :help netrw gives more information on it. From there, you can cruise around in the file system until you find the file you're interested in, press Enter, and start editing it.

Answer 2

Given the following conditions are satisfied, there is a way to achieve what you want.

• Vim is built with +clientserver. You can check this with :echo has('clientserver').

• You are in an environment that can and is properly configured to communicate with an X server.

• You use the --servername option and a relevant argument to it when starting Vim.

In this case, you can make use of the --remote option for Vim.

An example session would be:

vim --servername foo somefile.txt
:shell
<do stuff in your shell>
vim --servername foo --remote otherfile.txt
fg