Vimscript: Run Command in Terminal

2 minute read.

A more recent vim feature is :term, the ability to have a terminal inside vim. This super useful feature now allows you to switch between your code and asynchroneously run compile commands very easily.

Since I use Visual C++ on Windows, I need to run vcvarsall.bat in my console to allow CMake to properly find the compiler. To do so I now set up a vim command :Vcvarsall which does this for me so that I don’t have to remember the path. Using term_sendkeys(buf, keys), you can easily send text into the terminal from a vim command:

let $VCVARSALL = 'C:/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0/VC/vcvarsall.bat'
command! Vcvarsall call term_sendkeys(bufnr("%"), "\"%VCVARSALL%\" x64\<CR>")

The first line is the “easy way”, just an environment variable containing the path. Since that still requires a bit of awkward % typing, I defined the command to do it for me. bufnr("%") is just a way to get the current buffer. Hence this command only works through C-W : in a terminal buffer.

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