Call bash function using vim external command

Question

I use vim\'s :! external command function all the time, usually providing % as an argument to the shell command. For example :

:!psql -f %

Answer 1

This answer assumes your vim isn't actually using bash to invoke the remote commands - this can be tested by running :!echo $0 in vim.

Specifically for vim, add:

set shell=/bin/bash

to your .vimrc.

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In general, there's two strategies I've found to sometimes work when trying to get other programs to invoke my preferred shell:

export SHELL=/bin/bash

in eg. the .profile file, or:

ln -fsn /bin/bash /bin/sh

which updates the sh symlink to point to bash instead.

On many systems (certainly Ubuntu), /bin/sh is a symlink to a sh-compatible shell (such as bash), rather than the sh shell itself. Given this fact, some programs (I've seen this behaviour in GHC) seem to invoke /bin/sh, so changing where it points to will cause the programs to use bash instead.