How can you use Python in Vim?

Question

I waste a lot of time between Vim and Python. I find it too slow to manually copy-paste from Python to Vim and vice versa. A good broken example is:

%

Answer 1

Can someone elaborate this point: "your script can read from stdin to operate directly on the lines given (., %, ...)."

One common use is to sort lines of text using the 'sort' command available in your shell. For example, you can sort the whole file using this command:

:%!sort

Or, you could sort just a few lines by selecting them in visual mode and then typing:

:!sort

You could sort lines 5-10 using this command:

:5,10!sort

You could write your own command-line script (presuming you know how to do that) which reverses lines of text. It works like this:

bash$ myreverse 'hello world!'
!dlrow olleh

You could apply it to one of your open files in vim in exactly the same way you used sort:

:%!myreverse      <- all lines in your file are reversed