How to write buffer content to stdout?

Question

Is there any chance to write the content of the current vim buffer to stdout?

I\'d like to use vim to edit content that was passed via stdin - without the need of a

Answer 1

I think :w !tee would work perfectly,

Answer 2

You can also use pipe.vim. It does use a temporary file, but at least you don't have to worry about it in your own script.

To the second part of your question, you use the -s command line option with vim to remap :w to something else (like :w !tee).

Answer 3

Since you use Linux/Unix, you might also be interested in trying out moreutils. It provides a command called vipe, which reads from stdin, lets you edit the text in $EDITOR, and then prints the modified text to stdout.

So make sure you set your editor to Vim:

export EDITOR=vim

And then you can try these examples:

cat /etc/fstab | vipe
cut -d' ' -f2 /etc/mtab | vipe | less