Copy and paste in vim via keyboard between different mac terminals? - macos

Can anyone help me with this:
I'm trying to figure out how to copy and paste text between 2 different instances of vim on different terminals (using iterm2 or mac terminal). I can do it using the mouse if I do ":set mouse=a" but I'd like to be able to do it using the keyboard.
I've googled around and it says you can use the "* or "+ registers to copy/paste to/from the system clipboard, but when I type * or + in vim, the mac makes one of those sounds it makes when you can't do something. I've also done ":set clipboard=unnamed" but that hasn't worked either.
I'm using Mac OSX 10.7 (Lion) and iTerm2 or Mac terminal.
Thanks for the help

Could you add the output of :version?
I can yank with yy or y in one Vim instance running in Terminal.app window A and put with p or P in another Vim instance running in Terminal.app window B with this line in my ~/.vimrc:
set clipboard+=unnamed
without using specific clipboard registers (* or +).
And why do you have two Vim instances running in different terminals? SSH/local? If one is in an SSH session yanking/putting won't work because the two machines (local/remote) don't share the same clipboard(s).
EDIT
I suspected that Vim wasn't compiled with the right flag(s). Apparently that's the case.
Since you are using Mac OS X's default Vim my opinion is that you shouldn't need to re-compile it or even compile anything as it often leads to more problem's than it's worth.
Instead, download the latest MacVim build and use the (CLI) Vim executable within MacVim's bundle: it has all the same functionalities as MacVim (within the constraints of the CLI, of course).
Add this line to your ~/.bashrc or ~/.profile or wherever you are used to put aliases and custom bash functions:
alias vim='/path/to/MacVim.app/Contents/MacOS/Vim'

If you want to copy an entire file into your target file.
Open your target file in vim.
Put your cursor where you want it and type the following:
:r /path_to_file/file.ext
This will copy an entire file to where your cursor is...

Related

Can't figure out how to copy between VIM terminals on OS X

I know I need to copy into the " or * registers or something like that
Let's say I have one c program in one terminal running vim and another program in another terminal...
How do I copy a line between them?
Visually select the line you want to copy with V.
Hit "*y to yank the line into the * (clipboard) register.
Open the other terminal and vim inside it.
Hit "*p to paste or press i and then paste the info in there (like you would normally copy paste).
If this does not work then you may need to run vim --version and see if your copy of vim is compiled with a +clipboard. If it says -clipboard then you will need to install a version of vim that was compiled with clipboard. Results may vary when ssh-ing into a server.

I seem to have two different Vim environments. What is causing this?

I am trying to set up a development environment on Windows 10. So far I've installed Vim and Cmder (the full version with Git for Windows).
Playing around, I noticed some strange behavior which I don't understand, but I feel like it is important that I understand.
Case A
I open PowerShell
Locate the folder that contains vim.exe
Run .\vim.exe
Vim pops up and displays the default screen (VIM - Vi IMproved, version 8.1.1, etc.)
In Normal Mode I type :version to check the version number and to see where my _vimrc file is located
Vim gives me the expected output
Case B
I open Cmder and open a new PowerShell tab (I am assuming that that gives me access to the PowerShell instead of the default cmd.exe, but please correct me if I am wrong.)
NOW THIS IS WHERE IT GETS INTERESTING
If I repeat steps 2-6 exactly as in Case A, I get exactly the same result.
BUT:
If instead of locating the folder that stores vim.exe I just type in vim and hit Enter it opens Vim once again, but this time it has a tab on the bottom that says "unix". See attached images.
Out of curiosity, in Normal Mode I type :version, just like in Case A, but this time I am getting a different date in the version section, a different selection of options, and a different Unix-like path to the vimrc file which in now .vimrc instead of _vimrc.
What gives? My guess is that Git for Windows that came with Cmder is simulating a Unix environment and accessing a different Vim version that was compiled for Unix?
If this is true, then could you help me make sense of this Windows/Unix environment duality? Do I now have two HOME folders, two copies of the vimrc file, and two copies of who knows what else? What is simulating this Unix environment - Cmder?
Thanks!
I don't have experience with Cmder, but I use Git for Windows a lot.
Git for Windows comes with some Unix utilities and uses Cygwin which is Unix emulator for running those. Vim is among them as default text editor for commit messages, etc. So it might be it.
I tried to reproduce this on my machine. but I cannot reproduce what you are seeing. Nonetheless I found the vimrc file for the Vim you are probably using in the second case.
It is in <Cmder-dir>\vendor\git-for-windows\etc\vimrc.
You have two different versions of Vim installed, and depending on the environment you start it from, one or the other gets selected. Git (as a tool that initially was developed on and for Linux) typically brings with it a set of Windows-ports.
You can check what Vim binary is used (respectively) from within Vim via
:echo v:progpath
Whether you live with this duplication or try to consistently use one Vim instance is up to you. It looks like the Vim that accompanies Git has more Unix-centric settings; it might be good to keep that to avoid interoperability issues.
You definitely don't need to clone your whole Vim configuration - as long as you stick to Unix-style (LF) line endings, it can be understood by any Vim. By setting the HOME environment variable (but that may affect other programs!), you can make Vim use the same location. Else, you could give one Vim config location a small .vimrc that just corrects 'runtimepath', and then :sources the "real" vimrc from the other location.

Read only for open directories in vim

Then I open vim from terminal and open an directory like vim ., my starts in Read Only Mode.
I cant figure out why this happen and how I can change it.
If I start MacVim everything is fine. But then I start vim from the terminal and open a directory this screen comes. I can navigate one dir up and back again, and I have write access.
EDIT
I installed all my vim settings on Ubuntu 15.04. Now I can use
Does anybody know how to change this behaviour of vim?
Now I can use netw with the command vim . like I always used.
As you can see, there is no RO (read only) mark. How can
I have this in Mac on iTerm too?
What you see is exactly what you are supposed to see when doing $ vim .: the built-in netrw plugin displays a listing of the current directory that you can use to navigate your project.
If you don't want that listing, don't ask for it:
$ vim
or:
$ vim file
ctrl-p is not mapped by netrw; on my system, its set up by the yankring plugin. If vim is doing something other than going up one line, then you have a plugin involved. Try using :map to see what its mapped to; then do a search for that in your plugins directory.
The netrw way of opening a file in the same window is to use the <enter> key, although the g:netrw_browse_split variable may be used to change that default behavior.
Netrw opens in read-only mode, and that's not going to change. The file being opened should not be in read-only mode, however, if that's what you meant. If you're having a problem of that sort, please update your netrw; the most up-to-date version is at http://www.drchip.org/astronaut/vim/index.html#NETRW .
After I installed macvim 7.4 Every thing works!

How do I copy and paste from bash to vim and vice-versa using only the keyboard?

Using this command:
http://www.hypexr.org/bash_tutorial.php#vi
I'm able to use vim commands in the bash. But, what I'd like to do is copy and paste from that (bash) into vim and vice-versa.
I know there are other posts on here using the middle mouse button, but I use putty to connect to linux boxes, and the middle mouse performs a selection, just like the left click drag.
I'm not looking for something that will modify my windows clipboard. Selecting in vim is useful for transfering stuff to and from windows, but I'd like a solution that will work both through putty and using a direct terminal.
Thanks in advance...
I use the copy&paste feature in screen. ctrl-[ to enter copy mode and ctrl-] to paste. There are different buffers and the ability to dump to a file. It's pretty powerful. The default is to copy lines, but you can curtail by columns join display lines into a single copied line (and other options). And since you would likely already be in screen when you run vim, you would have the paste buffer available. I also have hooks to copy the buffer to/from the X clipboard.
I don't know if that can help you, but I have installed a utility called xclip, which shares the X11 clipboard with VIM. I mainly use it to copy and paste between instances of VIM running in different terminal windows.
I typically use xclip with the following mappings, which keep a very similar behaviour to the usual yank and paste commands, but using the clipboard:
nmap `yy :.w !xclip<CR><CR>
vmap `y :w !xclip<CR><CR>
nmap `p :.r!xclip -o<CR>
nmap `P :.-r!xclip -o<CR>
Use the * (or + in X Windows) registers to reference the system clipboard. Anything yanked-to or pasted-from those registers can be used to cooperate with other applications:
Cut/Copy examples
"*yy : copy current line to the system clipbard
gg"*yG : copy current file to the system clipbard
"*dd : cut current line to the system clipbard
etc, etc
Paste examples
"*p : paste the system clipbard
Or in insert mode:
i Ctrl+r *
Or
i Ctrl+r Ctrl+p *
(the last one pastes withouth formatting, useful to avoid those ugly pastes from the OS clipboard where each indented line appears more and more shifted)
You can copy from/to the clipboard in both vim and bash using ctrl + ins for copy, and shift + ins for paste.

Set environment variables on Mac OS X Lion

When someone says "edit your .plist file" or "your .profile" or ".bash_profile" etc, this just confuses me. I have no idea where these files are, how to create them if I have to do that, etc, and also why there seem to be so many different ones (why? Do they do different things?)
So could someone please explain very patiently to a previous Windows user (wanting desperately to become more familiar with the pleasant if initially somewhat confusing OS X world) how to do this step by step?
I need the variables to be set both for GUI applications and command line applications, and at the moment it's for an ant script that needs the variables, but there will most likely be other needs as well.
Please note that I have Lion too, since many of the answers you get Googling seem to be outdated for Lion...
Also note that I have practically zero experience using the Terminal. I'm willing to learn, but please explain for a novice...
First, one thing to recognize about OS X is that it is built on Unix. This is where the .bash_profile comes in. When you start the Terminal app in OS X you get a bash shell by default. The bash shell comes from Unix and when it loads it runs the .bash_profile script. You can modify this script for your user to change your settings. This file is located at:
~/.bash_profile
Update for Mavericks
OS X Mavericks does not use the environment.plist - at least not for OS X windows applications. You can use the launchd configuration for windowed applications. The .bash_profile is still supported since that is part of the bash shell used in Terminal.
Lion and Mountain Lion Only
OS X windowed applications receive environment variables from the your environment.plist file. This is likely what you mean by the ".plist" file. This file is located at:
~/.MacOSX/environment.plist
If you make a change to your environment.plist file then OS X windows applications, including the Terminal app, will have those environment variables set. Any environment variable you set in your .bash_profile will only affect your bash shells.
Generally I only set variables in my .bash_profile file and don't change the .plist file (or launchd file on Mavericks). Most OS X windowed applications don't need any custom environment. Only when an application actually needs a specific environment variable do I change the environment.plist (or launchd file on Mavericks).
It sounds like what you want is to change the environment.plist file, rather than the .bash_profile.
One last thing, if you look for those files, I think you will not find them. If I recall correctly, they were not on my initial install of Lion.
Edit: Here are some instructions for creating a plist file.
Open Xcode
Select File -> New -> New File...
Under Mac OS X select Resources
Choose a plist file
Follow the rest of the prompts
To edit the file, you can Control-click to get a menu and select Add Row. You then can add a key value pair. For environment variables, the key is the environment variable name and the value is the actual value for that environment variable.
Once the plist file is created you can open it with Xcode to modify it anytime you wish.
Your .profile or .bash_profile are simply files that are present in your "home" folder. If you open a Finder window and click your account name in the Favorites pane, you won't see them. If you open a Terminal window and type ls to list files you still won't see them. However, you can find them by using ls -a in the terminal. Or if you open your favorite text editor (say TextEdit since it comes with OS X) and do File->Open and then press Command+Shift+. and click on your account name (home folder) you will see them as well. If you do not see them, then you can create one in your favorite text editor.
Now, adding environment variables is relatively straightforward and remarkably similar to windows conceptually. In your .profile just add, one per line, the variable name and its value as follows:
export JAVA_HOME=/Library/Java/Home
export JRE_HOME=/Library/Java/Home
etc.
If you are modifying your "PATH" variable, be sure to include the system's default PATH that was already set for you:
export PATH=$PATH:/path/to/my/stuff
Now here is the quirky part, you can either open a new Terminal window to have the new variables take effect, or you will need to type .profile or .bash_profile to reload the file and have the contents be applied to your current Terminal's environment.
You can check that your changes took effect using the "set" command in your Terminal. Just type set (or set | more if you prefer a paginated list) and be sure what you added to the file is there.
As for adding environment variables to GUI apps, that is normally not necessary and I'd like to hear more about what you are specifically trying to do to better give you an answer for it.
Here's a bit more information specifically regarding the PATH variable in Lion OS 10.7.x:
If you need to set the PATH globally, the PATH is built by the system in the following order:
Parsing the contents of the file /private/etc/paths, one path per line
Parsing the contents of the folder /private/etc/paths.d. Each file in that folder can contain multiple paths, one path per line. Load order is determined by the file name first, and then the order of the lines in the file.
A setenv PATH statement in /private/etc/launchd.conf, which will append that path to the path already built in #1 and #2 (you must not use $PATH to reference the PATH variable that has been built so far). But, setting the PATH here is completely unnecessary given the other two options, although this is the place where other global environment variables can be set for all users.
These paths and variables are inherited by all users and applications, so they are truly global -- logging out and in will not reset these paths -- they're built for the system and are created before any user is given the opportunity to login, so changes to these require a system restart to take effect.
BTW, a clean install of OS 10.7.x Lion doesn't have an environment.plist that I can find, so it may work but may also be deprecated.
echo $PATH
it prints current path value
Then do vim ~/.bash_profile and write
export PATH=$PATH:/new/path/to/be/added
here you are appending to the old path, so preserves the old path and adds your new path to it
then do
source ~/.bash_profile
this will execute it and add the path
then again check with
echo $PATH
Unfortunately none of these answers solved the specific problem I had.
Here's a simple solution without having to mess with bash. In my case, it was getting gradle to work (for Android Studio).
Btw, These steps relate to OSX (Mountain Lion 10.8.5)
Open up Terminal.
Run the following command:
sudo nano /etc/paths (or sudo vim /etc/paths for vim)
Go to the bottom of the file, and enter the path you wish to add.
Hit control-x to quit.
Enter 'Y' to save the modified buffer.
Open a new terminal window then type:
echo $PATH
You should see the new path appended to the end of the PATH
I got these details from this post:
http://architectryan.com/2012/10/02/add-to-the-path-on-mac-os-x-mountain-lion/#.UkED3rxPp3Q
I hope that can help someone else
Simplified Explanation
This post/question is kind of old, so I will answer a simplified version for OS X Lion users.
By default, OSX Lion does not have any of the following files:
~/.bashrc
~/.bash_profile
~/.profile
At most, if you've done anything in the terminal you might see ~/.bash_history
What It Means
You must create the file to set your default bash commands (commonly in ~/.bashrc). To do this, use any sort of editor, though it's more simple to do it within the terminal:
%> emacs .profile
[from w/in emacs type:] source ~/.bashrc
[from w/in emacs type:] Ctrl + x Ctrl + s (to save the file)
[from w/in emacs type:] Ctrl + x Ctrl + c (to close emacs)
%> emacs .bashrc
[from w/in emacs type/paste all your bash commands, save, and exit]
The next time you quit and reload the terminal, it should load all your bash preferences. For good measure, it's usually a good idea to separate your commands into useful file names. For instance, from within ~/.bashrc, you should have a source ~/.bash_aliases and put all your alias commands in ~/.bash_aliases.
What worked for me is to create a .launchd.conf with the variables I needed:
setenv FOO barbaz
This file is read by launchd at login. You can add a variable 'on the fly' to the running launchd using:
launchctl setenv FOO barbaz`
In fact, .launchd.cond simply contains launchctl commands.
Variables set this way seem to be present in GUI applications properly.
If you happen to be trying to set your LANG or LC_ variables in this way, and you happen to be using iTerm2, make sure you disable the 'Set locale variables automatically' setting under the Terminal tab of the Profile you're using. That seems to override launchd's environment variables, and in my case was setting a broken LC_CTYPE causing issues on remote servers (which got passed the variable).
(The environment.plist still seems to work on my Lion though. You can use the RCenvironment preference pane to maintain the file instead of manually editing it or required Xcode. Still seems to work on Lion, though it's last update is from the Snow Leopard era. Makes it my personally preferred method.)
Setup your PATH environment variable on Mac OS
Open the Terminal program (this is in your Applications/Utilites folder by default).
Run the following command
touch ~/.bash_profile; open ~/.bash_profile
This will open the file in the your default text editor.
For ANDROID SDK as example :
You need to add the path to your Android SDK platform-tools and tools directory. In my example I will use "/Development/android-sdk-macosx" as the directory the SDK is installed in. Add the following line:
export PATH=${PATH}:/Development/android-sdk-macosx/platform-tools:/Development/android-sdk-macosx/tools
Save the file and quit the text editor.
Execute your .bash_profile to update your PATH.
source ~/.bash_profile
Now everytime you open the Terminal program you PATH will included the Android SDK.
Adding Path Variables to OS X Lion
This was pretty straight forward and worked for me, in terminal:
$echo "export PATH=$PATH:/path/to/whatever" >> .bash_profile #replace "/path/to/whatever" with the location of what you want to add to your bash profile, i.e: $ echo "export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/Cellar/nginx/1.0.12/sbin" >> .bash_profile
$. .bash_profile #restart your bash shell
A similar response was here: http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/os-x-operating-system/255324-problems-setting-path-variable-lion.html#post1317516
Open Terminal:
vi ~/.bash_profile
Apply changing to system (no need restart computer):
source ~/.bash_profile
(Also work with macOS Sierra 10.12.1)
I had problem with Eclipse (started as GUI, not from script) on Maverics that it did not take custom PATH. I tried all the methods mentioned above to no avail. Finally I found the simplest working answer based on hints from here:
Go to /Applications/eclipse/Eclipse.app/Contents folder
Edit Info.plist file with text editor (or XCode), add LSEnvironment dictionary for environment variable with full path. Note that it includes also /usr/bin etc:
<dict>
<key>LSEnvironment</key>
<dict>
<key>PATH</key>
<string>/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/dev/android-ndk-r9b</string>
</dict>
<key>CFBundleDisplayName</key>
<string>Eclipse</string>
...
Reload parameters for app with
/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.fra‌​mework/Support/lsregister -v -f /Applications/eclipse/Eclipse.app
Restart Eclipse
Let me illustrate you from my personal example in a very redundant way.
First after installing JDK, make sure it's installed.
Sometimes macOS or Linux automatically sets up environment variable for you unlike Windows. But that's not the case always. So let's check it.
The line immediately after echo $JAVA_HOME would be empty if the environment variable is not set. It must be empty in your case.
Now we need to check if we have bash_profile file.
You saw that in my case we already have bash_profile. If not we have to create a bash_profile file.
Create a bash_profile file.
Check again to make sure bash_profile file is there.
Now let's open bash_profile file. macOS opens it using it's default TextEdit program.
This is the file where environment variables are kept. If you have opened a new bash_profile file, it must be empty. In my case, it was already set for python programming language and Anaconda distribution. Now, i need to add environment variable for Java which is just adding the first line. YOU MUST TYPE the first line VERBATIM. JUST the first line. Save and close the TextEdit. Then close the terminal.
Open the terminal again. Let's check if the environment variable is set up.
I took the idiot route.
Added these to the end of /etc/profile
for environment in `find /etc/environments.d -type f`
do
. $environment
done
created a folder /etc/environments
create a file in it called "oracle" or "whatever" and added the stuff I needed set globally to it.
/etc$ cat /etc/environments.d/Oracle
export PATH=$PATH:/Library/Oracle/instantclient_11_2
export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=/Library/Oracle/instantclient_11_2
export SQLPATH=/Library/Oracle/instantclient_11_2
export PATH=$PATH:/Library/Oracle/instantclient_11_2
export TNS_ADMIN=/Library/Oracle/instantclient_11_2/network/admin
It is recommended to check default terminal shell before setting any environment variables, via following commands:
$ echo $SHELL
/bin/zsh
If your default terminal is /bin/zsh (Z Shell) like in my case (Personally prefer Z Shell), then you should set these environment variable in ~/.zshenv file with following contents (In this example, setting JAVA_HOME environment variable, but same applies to others):
export JAVA_HOME="$(/usr/libexec/java_home)"
Similarly, any other terminal type not mentioned above, you should set environment variable in its respective terminal env file.
More detail, which may perhaps be helpful to someone:
Due to my own explorations, I now know how to set environment variables in 7 of 8 different ways. I was trying to get an envar through to an application I'm developing under Xcode. I set "tracer" envars using these different methods to tell me which ones get it into the scope of my application. From the below, you can see that editing the "scheme" in Xcode to add arguments works, as does "putenv". What didn't set it in that scope: ~/.MACOS/environment.plist, app-specific plist, .profile, and adding a build phase to run a custom script (I found another way in Xcode [at least] to set one but forgot what I called the tracer and can't find it now; maybe it's on another machine....)
GPU_DUMP_DEVICE_KERNEL is 3
GPU_DUMP_TRK_ENVPLIST is (null)
GPU_DUMP_TRK_APPPLIST is (null)
GPU_DUMP_TRK_DOTPROFILE is (null)
GPU_DUMP_TRK_RUNSCRIPT is (null)
GPU_DUMP_TRK_SCHARGS is 1
GPU_DUMP_TRK_PUTENV is 1
... on the other hand, if I go into Terminal and say "set", it seems the only one it gets is the one from .profile (I would have thought it would pick up environment.plist also, and I'm sure once I did see a second tracer envar in Terminal, so something's probably gone wonky since then. Long day....)
Step1: open ~/.bash_profile
Now a text editor opens:
Step2: variable name should be in capitals. in this example variable is NODE_ENV
Step3: export NODE_ENV=development
Save it and close.
Restart your system.
Done.
To check env variable: open terminal and type
echo $NODE_ENV

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