vim-client 1.0.1

Connect to Vim server, edit files, evaluate Vim expressions, and send commands to Vim.

vim-client - send commands to the Vim editor

The command-line tools vim-client-edit, vim-client-diff and the Python module vim_client will allow you to connect to a Vim server and make it:

• Edit files or directories in new tabs,
• Compare files (similar to vimdiff),
• Evaluate expressions and return their result,
• Send commands to Vim.

It will allow you, for example, to make Vim edit or diff files from outside of Vim (e.g. from a shell like Bash, Zsh, etc.).

Requirements

• Python >= 3.0,
• The Vim editor ('vim' or 'gvim' in $PATH. Vim must be compiled with |+clientserver|, which is the case of most Vim distributions, because the Python module vim_client uses command-line arguments vim --remote-*)

Installation

sudo pip install vim-client

The 'vim-client-*' command-line tools

Edit a file in a new tab:

vim-client-edit file1

Compare two files:

vim-client-diff file1 file2

Add aliases to ~/.bashrc

It is recommended to add the following aliases to your ~/.bashrc:

alias gvim=vim-client-edit
alias vim=vim-client-edit
alias vi=vim-client-edit
alias vimdiff=vim-client-diff

Add to ~/.vimrc

If you prefer to start diff mode with vertical splits:

set diffopt+=vertical

License

Copyright (c) James Cherti.

Distributed under terms of the MIT license.

Links

• vim-client @PyPI
• vim-client @GitHub
• Vim documentation about +clientserver and 'vim --remote' (:help remote.txt)