Vim: How to open a file whose name is determined by running a shell command

Question

Suppose that I have a command, say find ABCD | grep text1 which outputs full-path of a file to be opened. I know I can send this output to vim using xargs and open the file, but this is possible only in command line.

How can I do this from inside vim editor?

Do you want to vi "$(find ABCD | grep text1)" from the commandline or do you want to :! vi "$(find ABCD | grep text1)` from vi ? — Walter A
– Walter A, Commented Mar 9, 2016 at 21:34
I want everything to happen from within vim. I don't want to create a new vim process for each file I want to open. — Mahdi
– Mahdi, Commented Mar 9, 2016 at 21:40

mauro · Accepted Answer · 2016-03-09 21:31:52Z

4

Assuming COMMAND returns exactly the path of your file, then something like this should be ok from the command line:

$ vi $(COMMAND)

and this should be ok from within vim:

:e `COMMAND`

answered Mar 9, 2016 at 21:31

mauro

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