Open a file given by the result of a command in vim

Question

I find myself doing the following almost every day

Run a find (find -name somefile.txt)
Open the result in vim

The problem is I have to copy and paste the result of the find into the vim command. Is there any way to avoid having to do this? I have experimented a bit (find -name somefile.txt | vim) but haven't found anything that works.

Thanks in advance

score 46 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 14 '11 at 17:27

46

You can use command substitution:

vim $(find -name somefile.txt)

or

find -name somefile.txt -exec vim {} \;

answered Jan 14 '11 at 17:27

dogbane

29,677

This will try to open all the 'somefile.txt' – balki Jan 14 '11 at 17:31
that's what is required. We need to open the file found for editing. – dogbane Jan 14 '11 at 17:31
1

ok. If that is what is needed, then find -name somefile.txt | xargs vim – balki Jan 14 '11 at 17:37
6

No, that doesn't work properly and might even mess up your terminal! You can't pipe to xargs vim, because vim expects input to come from an interactive terminal. – dogbane Jan 14 '11 at 17:43
Vim emits an alert, but it still works in the end. – Luc Hermitte Jan 17 '11 at 14:39
3

An anonymous user notes that this will fail if the filename has spaces – Michael Mrozek Dec 15 '11 at 21:39
vim $(find -name somefile.txt) works but I'm always annoyed to have to do this, especially when the command inside the $(...) is usually the last command you entered and I just want to pipe it to vim. pvim does that - http://unix.stackexchange.com/a/30208/14810 – sente Jan 28 '12 at 04:33
4

Another alternative would be vim \find -name somefile.txt``. @StuartPowers Alternatively, you can use vim \!-1`` if you already used this find was you previous command – Bernhard Jan 28 '12 at 09:06
3

@balki to use xargs in this scenario, you have to use the flag -o, it's in the man:
-o Reopen stdin as /dev/tty in the child process before executing the command. This is useful if you want xargs to run an interactive application.
– davidmh Dec 21 '13 at 00:06
@dogbane $ find /etc/update-motd.d -type f -exec vim {} < /dev/null ;
https://stackoverflow.com/a/13555918
– user197292 Aug 23 '17 at 03:49
Note that the second option opens one vim instance for every single file. This causes can cause plenty of inconveniences, for example, you may ending up closing vim several dozens of times. – durum Dec 15 '17 at 11:46
You can use this to open each file in a new tab find . -name '*file_name*' -exec vim -p {} +; – dosentmatter Sep 05 '18 at 22:09
To adjust the result supplied, you might wish to adjust it with cut ofc echo 'someletters_12345_moreleters.ext' | cut -d'_' -f 2 - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/428109/extract-substring-in-bash/428118#428118 – FantomX1 Apr 27 '21 at 15:03

score 6 · Answer 2 · edited Jan 15 '11 at 02:38

6

Try this:

start vim
in vim, use the following:

:r!find /<path> -name 'expression'

The results should appear in vim when the search is complete.

Or

Try:

find /<path> -name > results.txt
vim results.txt

edited Jan 15 '11 at 02:38

Steven D

46,160

answered Jan 14 '11 at 19:46

Karl

204

This is not an answer to the question at all. You're printing the content of the file in the current buffer, not actually opening the file. – adamency Mar 24 '23 at 21:41

score 5 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 14 '11 at 21:59

If you don't mind running the command again: press Up and append an xargs command. Or use history substitution and run

!! | xargs vim          # won't work with file names containing \'" or whitespace
!! | xargs -d \\n vim   # GNU only (Linux, Cygwin)

There's a lightweight way of saving the output of a command that works in ksh and zsh but not in bash (it requires the output side of a pipeline to be executed in the parent shell). Pipe the command into the function K (zsh definition below), which keeps its output in the variable $K.

function K {
    K=("${(@f)$(tee /dev/fd/3)}") 3>&1;
}
find … |K
vim $K

Automatically saving the output of each command is not really possible with the shell alone, you need to run the command in an emulated terminal. You can do it by running inside script (a BSD utility, but available on most unices including Linux and Solaris), which saves all output of your session through a file (there's still a bit of effort needed to reliably detect the last prompt in the typescript).

Martin York · Answer 4 · 2023-08-22T17:13:20.190

3

I like to to use the Command substitution

> vim $(find . -name somefile.txt)

The $( ... ) executes the command inside the braces and the output can then be used by the command. The above will find all files somefile.txt thus allowing you to use :next to move through all the files.

Its very usefull if you spend a couple of tries refining the command, because you can then use history substitution to repeat the command for the editor.

> find . -name somefile.txt
./debug/somefile.txt
./somefile.txt
> vi $( !! )

edited Aug 22 '23 at 17:13

answered Jan 14 '11 at 20:31

Martin York

952

I usually use $(...) for command substitution rather than backticks. See here for reasons. – Ingo Aug 22 '23 at 08:50
@Ingo Yep nodays I would to. – Martin York Aug 22 '23 at 17:12

score 2 · Answer 5 · edited Jan 28 '12 at 09:00

2

I must have missed the point here, because I would use:

:find **/somefile.txt

(if I knew there was only one in my :echo &path ) or, if I wanted them all:

:args **/somefile.txt

Edit: Whoa! Ok, so I did miss the point - you want the find list, not the actual files opened? Try (again, from within Vim):

!!find . -name somefile.txt

-- my bad :)

edited Jan 28 '12 at 09:00

Mat

52,586

answered Jan 28 '12 at 06:29

Barry Arthur

21

score 2 · Answer 6 · edited Dec 15 '17 at 12:31

2

As @davidmh pointed in the comments, you can use xargs with the flag -o if you want to use an interactive application.

find . -name somefile.txt | xargs -o vim

If you do not use -o, you will probably mess up the terminal state after leaving vim. If you have done it, you should be able to reset your terminal with the following command:

reset

edited Dec 15 '17 at 12:31

muru

72,889

answered Dec 15 '17 at 11:56

durum

143

score 1 · Answer 7 · answered Jan 28 '12 at 04:26

I wrote a function pvim which does what you want. If multiple lines are piped to pvim it ignores all but the first, it could be extended though to open multiple files in vim.

stu@sente ~ $ function pvim() { read -r somefile; exec < /dev/fd/1; vim "$somefile"; }
stu@sente ~ $ type pvim
pvim is a function
pvim ()
{
    read -r somefile;
    exec < /dev/fd/1;
    vi "$somefile"
}

Use it like:

stu@sente ~ $ find . -name "foo.txt" | pvim

which will load the first "foo.txt" into vim just as if you had typed:

vim $(find . -name "foo.txt | head -n1")

score 1 · Answer 8 · answered Feb 03 '20 at 06:37

1

To open all files found in individual tabs, you can:

vim -p $(find -name somefile.txt)

or

find -name somefile.txt -exec vim -p {} +;

answered Feb 03 '20 at 06:37

danba

113

score 1 · Answer 9 · answered Nov 10 '20 at 16:42

1

The solution is to use xargs -o vim

I added the following to my .bash_aliases

# .bash_aliases
Example Usage: "ls | sort -r | pipe-vim"
alias pipe-vim="xargs -o vim"

answered Nov 10 '20 at 16:42

Weston Ganger

1,926
1
11
10

score 0 · Answer 10 · answered Oct 14 '15 at 21:52

0

Here is a simpler xargs solution than those already mentioned:

find -name somefile.txt | xargs vim -p

The -p option tells vim to open each file in a separate tab. I find this more convenient than using buffers.

answered Oct 14 '15 at 21:52

Cory Klein

18,911

Searene · Answer 11 · 2016-12-11T04:05:55.390

0

I found that opening a file with the help of locate in vim is extremely convenient and much faster than find.

The following command searches a file called app.py in the path containing the directory MyPythonProject.

:args `locate '*MyPythonProject*app.py'`

edited Dec 11 '16 at 04:05

answered Dec 11 '16 at 03:53

Searene

111

Open a file given by the result of a command in vim

11 Answers11

Example Usage: "ls | sort -r | pipe-vim"

Linked