Vim: execute current file

vim

If I have a file with a shebang line (e.g. #!/bin/bash) open in Vim and the file has execute permissions (i.e. chmod +x) I know I can type this to execute it without leaving the editor:

:! %:p

: for command mode
! to run a shell command
% to refer to the file in the current buffer
:p to use the full path of the current file

Is there a shorter shortcut for this frequent task?

e.g. there is a ZZ shortcut for :wq, etc.

Best Answer

:!%:p

,without the spaces, is shorter.

If you want an even shorter shortcut, you can create a custom mapping:

nnoremap <F9> :!%:p

or the more "mnemonic":

nnoremap <leader>r :!%:p

Use `\r` instead of `\n`.

Substituting by \n inserts a null character into the text. To get a newline, use \r. When searching for a newline, you’d still use \n, however. This asymmetry is due to the fact that \n and \r do slightly different things:

\n matches an end of line (newline), whereas \r matches a carriage return. On the other hand, in substitutions \n inserts a null character whereas \r inserts a newline (more precisely, it’s treated as the input CR). Here’s a small, non-interactive example to illustrate this, using the Vim command line feature (in other words, you can copy and paste the following into a terminal to run it). xxd shows a hexdump of the resulting file.

echo bar > test
(echo 'Before:'; xxd test) > output.txt
vim test '+s/b/\n/' '+s/a/\r/' +wq
(echo 'After:'; xxd test) >> output.txt
more output.txt

Before:
0000000: 6261 720a                                bar.
After:
0000000: 000a 720a                                ..r.

In other words, \n has inserted the byte 0x00 into the text; \r has inserted the byte 0x0a.

Best Answer

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Use \r instead of \n.

Related Topic

Use `\r` instead of `\n`.