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In bash, using vi mode, if I hit Esc,v, my current command line is opened in the editor specified by $EDITOR and I am able to edit it in full screen before 'saving' the command to be returned to the shell and executed.

How can I achieve similar behaviour in zsh? Hitting v in command mode results in a bell an has no apparent effect, despite the EDITOR environment variable being set.

Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
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Murali Suriar
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6 Answers6

67

In case you prefer Emacs keybindings:

autoload -z edit-command-line
zle -N edit-command-line
bindkey "^X^E" edit-command-line
Daniel Serodio
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61

See edit-command-line in zshcontrib.

bindkey -M vicmd v edit-command-line
ephemient
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    (Just to clarify): To enabled the edit-command-line “widget” you will need something like autoload edit-command-line; zle -N edit-command-line in one of your zsh init files (see the ZLE Functions section of the zshcontrib documentation). – Chris Johnsen Jan 29 '11 at 03:14
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    How do you activate this once it's in place? The bindkey in the emacs-style answer makes sense to me. But I can't find reference on what bindkey -M vicmd v sets up. – Mat Schaffer May 25 '12 at 18:50
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    @MatSchaffer Same as Bash: if you are in vi mode, then hit <ESC> to enter command mode from insert mode and and then v to visual mode (Meta-v is the same), or just v if you're already in command mode. If you're using Emacs mode, the typical binding is C-x C-e. – ephemient May 25 '12 at 20:03
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    Remapping the v key means you can't use visual mode any more, so I prefer remapping to the spacebar (which doesn't do anything useful in normal mode) with bindkey -M vicmd ' ' edit-command-line – gib Sep 04 '18 at 23:24
46

You can use fc to edit the last command in history. It's not the same as editing the same command, but a quick hit on the Enter key makes your current command the last command in history.

Christoph Wurm
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    This is great when you are ssh'ed into some other machine which does not have edit-command-line setup as one may have in their personal environment. – anishpatel Mar 10 '20 at 18:28
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    what does fc stands for? f-command...? – fabmilo Jan 07 '23 at 03:37
  • This is almost certainly what you want. Just about any time your command is complex enough to want to edit it, you've already tried a few different variations of it so it's in your history. To add on to this, you can use fc $ENTRY to edit that command in your history. zshbuiltins(1) has more info. And, then, when it works, you can use fc again to save it to a file to run later as a script! – anahata Mar 18 '23 at 23:14
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This is the complete configuration that I added to my ~/.zshrc to get the same behavior from bash:

export VISUAL=vim
autoload edit-command-line; zle -N edit-command-line
bindkey -M vicmd v edit-command-line
Anthon
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Matt Hughes
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    Per the earlier comments, this is configured by default if you're using Oh my ZSH or Prezto. The latter requires the editor module to be loaded and vi or vim selected for command mode. – AL the X Jun 09 '15 at 12:10
  • I'd vote to make this the accepted answer, it solved my question with all configuration described. Thanks. – Laurent Jul 17 '16 at 20:14
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    For me, v should surrounded by quote: 'v'. – roachsinai Aug 21 '20 at 15:06
  • but I lost my cursor after existing vim – apollo Nov 09 '20 at 22:15
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    @roachsinai, if v were a special character in the syntax of zsh, you'd need bindkey -M 'v'icmd 'v' edit-command-line and export VISUAL='v'im but of course v is not special in the syntax of zsh or any shell for obvious reasons, so the quotes are superflous. They'd only be needed if you had something like alias -g v=gotcha in your ~/.zshrc (and no alias -g "'v'=ahah") – Stéphane Chazelas Sep 20 '22 at 14:01
  • this works as expected with zsh 5.9 (arm-apple-darwin22.1.0). hooray for proper full screen command line editing! – Lex Scarisbrick Jul 06 '23 at 00:46
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In case you're like me wanting to emulate oh-my-zsh behaviour that is to open the current line in vim when you press 'vv' in normal mode, use the following :

autoload -Uz edit-command-line
zle -N edit-command-line
bindkey -M vicmd 'vv' edit-command-line
cassepipe
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1

I think @quodlibetor's comment is worth an answer on its own:

If you are using .oh-my-zsh, the default key compination is:

Ctrl+x followed by Ctrl+e

Brimstedt
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