redirecting output of 'find' command to 'vim'

Question

I am doing a find $PWD -name 'filename' | vim -

expecting the file filename to be opened in vim editor. but it is not working. In this case, I am sure that there exists just one file with name 'filename'.

Also the result of find gives the complete path on stdout.

using command | vim - tells vim to read the output from command and put it into a buffer. (As opposed to opening those files.) — idbrii
– idbrii, Commented Jun 13, 2011 at 5:21
@pydave Incidentally, vim <(command) does the same, using Bash process substitution, and this works with more than just vim. e.g. to see the differences between two directories, use diff <(ls -l dir1) <(ls -l dir2) — Jonathan Hartley
– Jonathan Hartley, Commented Mar 1, 2013 at 14:42

Roman Cheplyaka · Accepted Answer · 2011-02-01 20:37:57Z

29

vim "$(find "$PWD" -name 'filename')"

or

find "$PWD" -name 'filename' -exec vim {} \;

(You can drop "$PWD", by the way. find starts the search from current directory by default.)

answered Feb 1, 2011 at 20:37

Roman Cheplyaka

39k7 gold badges79 silver badges126 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

8 Comments

Jonathan Hartley Over a year ago

This does not work for me. vim "$(find "$PWD" -name 'filename')" opens a new file whos name is a concatenation of all the filenames output from find. This is on OSX.

idbrii Over a year ago

You probably want to use + to concatenate the results instead of ; to operate on single results when ending the find: find "$PWD" -name 'filename' -exec vim {} + should open the files in one vim instance (so they're accessibly from :args).

idbrii Over a year ago

"You can drop "$PWD", by the way" -- note that adding $PWD can make a difference if you need the full path (instead of relative). (Like if you're writing the results to a file.)

idbrii Over a year ago

@JonathanHartley: That doesn't work because you're quoting the output. If you don't quote the output (and don't have spaces in your filenames) does it work? Regardless, you're better off using -exec (with +).

idbrii Over a year ago

@JonathanHartley: In your last example (with +), you could also use vim -o to open them in splits (see also -O and -p). Also, you don't need to escape + because it doesn't mean anything special to bash.

|

frabjous · Accepted Answer · 2011-02-01 22:17:21Z

9

find . -name 'filename' -print0 | xargs -0 vim

should also work. You might want to read up on xargs, which is a handy thing to know about.

answered Feb 1, 2011 at 22:17

frabjous

1,0479 silver badges13 bronze badges

2 Comments

Jonathan Hartley Over a year ago

This does not work for me. find . -name 'utility' -print0 | xargs -0 vim instead opens a single new file, whose name is a concatenation of the output from find. This is on OSX.

Jonathan Hartley Over a year ago

Ah. The OP specifies there is just one matching file. My objection is therefore lessened

Ben · Accepted Answer · 2018-02-21 16:35:44Z

4

Mentioned in @idbrii's comment, but my favorite is:

find . -name 'filename' -type f -exec vim {} \+

This opens up each file found in its own buffer ready to be navigated with :next and :prev. Tested on OSX, but I'm fairly certain it will work on Linux too.

answered Feb 21, 2018 at 16:35

Ben

6,4834 gold badges38 silver badges46 bronze badges

Comments

Arash Fotouhi · Accepted Answer · 2020-07-11 03:29:52Z

3

One way I find is very easy is enclosing the find command with backticks (character under tilde on most keyboards) and passing it to vim.

vim `find . -name myfile`

In fact, you can use backtick for any command to get the literal string output of the command.

edited Jul 11, 2020 at 3:29

answered May 27, 2020 at 17:18

Arash Fotouhi

2,1533 gold badges25 silver badges45 bronze badges

1 Comment

Rasmus Groth Over a year ago

How does this answer not have more votes?!? Genious!

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

redirecting output of 'find' command to 'vim'

4 Answers 4

8 Comments

2 Comments

Comments

1 Comment

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

4 Answers 4

8 Comments

2 Comments

Comments

1 Comment

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related