Programmatically execute vim commands?

Question

I'm interested in setting up a TDD environment for developing Vim scripts and rc files. As a simple example, say I want to have vim insert 8 spaces when I press the tab key. I would set up a script that did the following:

Launch vim using a sandboxed .vimrc file
press i
press tab
press esc
press :w test_out
assert that test_out contains ' '

by the default config in vim, this would fail. However, once I add set expandtab to my .vimrc file, the test will pass.

How do I programmatically issue these commands? vim -c <commands> is close, but seems to only work for ex mode commands. Any suggestions? This question seem to be thoroughly google-proof.

Miguel Ventura · Accepted Answer · 2010-06-13 18:01:44Z

5

You can try vim -S <script in> and, for your convenience, the opposite vim -w <script out>.

For more details on these options check VIM's documentation for the -s and -w arguments.

answered Jun 13, 2010 at 18:01

Miguel Ventura

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msw · Accepted Answer · 2010-06-13 18:02:23Z

1

Is using vim a requirement? If it isn't you are using the wrong tool for the job, sed might be more appropriate.

But if you must, you can do it with vim anyway, just call it ex

#!/bin/sh
# insert a tab as the first character of test_out
ex test_out <<EOF
s/^/^I/
wq
EOF

if [ `od -c test_out | awk 'NR == 1 {print $2}'` != '\t' ] ; then
    echo "assertion failed"; exit 1;
fi

Where ^I is actually a Tab. Although this is a very odd approach.

answered Jun 13, 2010 at 18:02

msw

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1 Comment

Ben Gartner Over a year ago

Yes, the idea is to do TDD on vim plugins and the like. I suppose I could do TDD on an external shell script and then map to it from with in Vim, but that's not quite what I want. Largely I'm interested in better understanding what I am lifting from other people's .vimrc files and plugin directories.

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