vim - write buffer content to stdout

Question

Is there any chance to write the content of the current vim buffer to stdout?

I'd like to use vim to edit content that was passed via stdin - without the need of a temporary file to retrieve the modified content. (on Linux/Unix)

Added: Is it possible that a plugin/script - that act on quit or save put the buffer content to stdout?

Answer 1

Reading from stdin:

echo "hey" | vim  -

When you :w you'd still have to give it a filename.

Programs that use vim as their EDITOR, like crontab -e pass it a filename so that user can just :x and not worry about filenames.

EDIT

You could also do something like this:

mkfifo /tmp/some_pipe
echo "hey" > /tmp/some_pipe ; cat /tmp/some_pipe

And from another process (or terminal)

vim /tmp/some_pipe

Beware that writing to a pipe will block until something reads from it, and reading will block untill something writes to it, so it might be safer to use regular files.

Answer 2

You probably want to use sed, awk, perl, or some other filter that is designed to transform data from input to output. Vim is not a filter and trying to make it one is difficult or impossible.

Answer 3

Since you use Linux/Unix, you might also be interested in trying out moreutils. It provides a command called vipe, which reads from stdin, lets you edit the text in $EDITOR, and then prints the modified text to stdout.

So make sure you set your editor to Vim:

export EDITOR=vim

And then you can try these examples:

cat /etc/fstab | vipe

cut -d' ' -f2 /etc/mtab | vipe | less