9

I would like to be able to search google from within any Vim file. A nice command might be :goo while in normal mode.

Then I type what I want to search and bam it opens my default browser with the search.

How would I do this?

Vivian De Smedt
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Jason Basanese
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    I think you can have a look at https://github.com/szw/vim-g – nobe4 Jul 28 '16 at 14:47
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    I dunno, type then open browser, or open browser then type. Seems a bit pointless me. Plus if you type in the browser you get search completion. What's the use case? – Antony Jul 28 '16 at 16:00
  • The use case is not having to switch focus to browser, also being able to paste confusing code from any of the registers into the search. Sometimes system register is a little choppy and it would be and extra step to copy to that register. Plus come on -->"Googling from vim"<-- – Jason Basanese Jul 28 '16 at 18:16
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    If you want to google from your text editor you should have a look at emacs ;-) More seriously, I understand that it is fun to see but IMO that's not an efficient way to use Vim. – statox Jul 29 '16 at 08:05
  • You will switch focus, at least mentally, so using the "right" tool for what you want is a plus. I feel like "Googling from vim" is like "gdb from vim", it can be done, but it's not the purpose of each tool (aka vim is only a text editor, nothing more). – nobe4 Jul 29 '16 at 08:06
  • Well I have a couple of mappings to quickly copy stuff to the system clipboard. And I have an OS-level key binding to open Chrome. So it's dead easy to get stuff from vim into Chrome. The benefit of this is that you can use it with other applications, not just your web browser. It's a quick win and is composable. – Antony Jul 29 '16 at 09:54

5 Answers5

11

You have a couple of options here:

Using a plugin:

Or, if you prefer a lightweight solution, you can try the following:

function! GoogleSearch()
     let searchterm = getreg("g")
     silent! exec "silent! !firefox \"http://google.com/search?q=" . searchterm . "\" &"
endfunction
vnoremap <F6> "gy<Esc>:call GoogleSearch()<CR>

(source)

Using the vim-shell plugin you can rewrite this to:

function! GoogleSearch()
     let searchterm = getreg("g")
     Open "http://google.com/search?q=" . searchterm . "\" &"
endfunction
vnoremap <F6> "gy<Esc>:call GoogleSearch()<CR>

You can also have a look at those links:

And I highly recommend this video by Drew Niel.

Community
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nobe4
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2

As others have pointed out, Searching from Vim is not something one would want to do every time, but I do understand that there are some situations where you just want to search for a particular word in Vim. In those situations this plugin might be useful.

Mind you, this is something I wrote only for the purpose of searching for the word under the cursor, nothing more.

Vim-Scour

The Readme file has info about how to use this. And even if you don't want to use the plugin itself, look at the plugin file. Its really small and you will get an idea about how you can do system calls.

Durga Swaroop
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    It's nice to see you are starting to write Vim plugins. I suggest you have a look at :h :execute, which let you insert variable name in your commands. This could simplify largely your scour#Search function. – nobe4 Jul 29 '16 at 12:07
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    I agree with @nobe4: your function could be one line actually: execute "silent !" . g:scour_browser . " www." . g:scour_search_engine . ".com/search?q=<cword>". execute will execute the string provided as argument, in the string you simply concatenate the browser and search engine variables with . and you're good to go :-) – statox Jul 29 '16 at 12:13
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    @statox Thanks for the suggestion. It was a while ago I wrote that. I was just learning Vim scripting then. Though I am still a beginner in scripting I haven't bothered to update the plugin. – Durga Swaroop Jul 29 '16 at 14:24
0

you can do it like this

x-www-browser https://google.com

then you can do a search or if you want to open a link it would be like this

x-www-broswer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
Justin DevLog
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    Welcome to [vi.se]! I'm not sure you addressed how to do this specifically in vim, though it looks as simple as doing :! x-ww-browser ... – D. Ben Knoble Oct 24 '20 at 17:30
0
nmap gy :silent execute "!google-chrome http://google.com/search?q=" . shellescape("<cWORD>") . " &"<CR>
vmap gy <Esc>:silent execute "!google-chrome http://google.com/search?q=" . shellescape("<C-r>*") . " &"<CR>

The first command allows you press gy to search for a word under your cursor. The second command allows you to visually search for a term, also using gy but in visual mode. Replace google-chrome with your browser command or use vim-shell as in the other answer.

khatchad
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0

Providing a snippet to resolve url encoding.

" ref: https://vi.stackexchange.com/a/1958/49235
" Call shell command silently then Ctrl+L (or :redraw!) to refresh the screen when back to Vim.
command! -nargs=1 Silent execute ':silent !'.<q-args> | execute ':redraw!'

" google search
nnoremap <silent> gG  :Silent open "http://google.com/search?q="<c-r>=<sid>encode_words(expand("<cword>"))<cr><cr>
vnoremap <silent> gG y:Silent open "http://google.com/search?q="<c-r>=<sid>encode_words(@")<cr><cr>


" https://vi.stackexchange.com/questions/42717/how-do-i-turn-a-string-into-url-encoded-string
" URL encode a string. ie. Percent-encode characters as necessary.
function! s:encode_words(text) abort
    " Replace \n, preserve \
    let words = substitute(a:text, '\n', ' ', 'g')
    let words = substitute(words, '\', '\', 'g')


let result = &quot;&quot;
let characters = split(words, '.\zs')
for character in characters
    if character == &quot; &quot;
        let result = result . &quot;+&quot;
    elseif s:needs_encode(character)
        let i = 0
        while i &lt; strlen(character)
            let byte = strpart(character, i, 1)
            let decimal = char2nr(byte)
            &quot; Avoiding command expansion
            let result = result . &quot;\\%&quot; . printf(&quot;%02x&quot;, decimal)
            let i += 1
        endwhile
    else
        let result = result . character
    endif
endfor

return result



endfunction


" Returns 1 if the given character should be percent-encoded in a URL encoded
" string.
function! s:needs_encode(character)
    let ascii_code = char2nr(a:character)
    if ascii_code >= 48 && ascii_code <= 57
        return 0
    elseif ascii_code >= 65 && ascii_code <= 90
        return 0
    elseif ascii_code >= 97 && ascii_code <= 122
        return 0
    elseif a:character == "-" || a:character == "_" || a:character == "." || a:character == "~"
        return 0
    endif


return 1



endfunction
alps2006
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