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Is it possible to pipe an unsaved buffer to an external command and then replace the buffer by the command’s output?

Toothrot
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2 Answers2

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You can use the "filter" command,:!, which like most commands can be prefixed with a range:

:{range}!cmd

If you prefix this with a range, it will pipe those lines to the command's stdin, and replace those lines with the program's output. In this case you want to use % as the range, which means the entire buffer. For example:

:%!sort

You can find the Vim documentation with :help :range!.

Martin Tournoij
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  • Very helpful. I use this to format long SQL queries to be more readable, e.g. open vim, paste the raw SQL string, then inside vim, I run :%!sqlformat --reindent --keywords upper --identifiers lower - – Eldamir May 18 '18 at 06:47
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Yes that should be possible. One possibility: the system() function takes as optional argument the input to be used for the external command.

Christian Brabandt
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