Vim: Pipe selected text to shell cmd and receive output on vim info/command line

Question

I want to pipe the selected text to a shell command and receive the one-line output from this shell command on the vim info/command line?

What I\'m really trying to

Answer 1

I would do it like this:

Place this function in your vimrc:

function Test() range
  echo system('echo '.shellescape(join(getline(a:firstline, a:lastline), "\n")).'| pbcopy')
endfunction

This will allow you to call this function by doing:

:'<,'>call Test()

Then you can also map that like this (just under the function declaration in your vimrc):

com -range=% -nargs=0 Test :,call Test()

So you can call the function doing this:

:'<,'>Test

Note: :<','> are range selectors, in order to produce them just select the pertinent lines in visual mode and then go to command mode (pressing the colon key)