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.
I am on Windows 7 and I have Git Bash at my disposal after installing Git for Windows.
I found mouse inconvenient to select-copy-paste in terminal window. What is the shortcut for text selection (like Shift+←, Shift+→ in Notepad editor)?
I have seen many irrelevant verbose replies to this question, but all, what I am looking for is just an appropriate shortcut (like Ctrl+Insert for Copy and Shift+Insert for Paste).
It is best to install a CMD enhancer like ConEmu.
From there, you can type "bash", and you will see in that Git bash session, that simple CTRL+C, Ctrl+V are enough for copy/paste.
And for selecting the text (in a ConEmu session), Shift+←, Shift+→ works too. For W7 or W10.
Does Powershell have the capacity to generate some kind of terminal-based text editor program? I am switching to Windows because it supports a few programs I can't use otherwise; but I am having trouble discovering some sort of way to edit text files directly from Powershell. Is it possible to create a terminal-based text editor with a Powershell script; and if not is there a simple alternative?
Why don't you just install Vim, as it has a Windows version too? Add it to path and you should be all set.
I would suggest micro which is a powershell/ cmd/ terminal based text editor for Windows and other OS
https://micro-editor.github.io/
Because micro is flexible cut/copy/paste same keyboard shortcut as notepad. The best part is, it has color highlighter sensitive to programming language. Here is an image
Note: don't forget the add the micro.exe path to environment variable.
Command to open a file from cmd:
micro ./file.xyz
You use chocolately if it is installed on your powershell if you don’t have it just search for it online
Choco install nano
After this you can use nano
Then just
nano filenam
If it exists it edit it and if it doesn’t it create a new file
I'm building a lightweight version of the ncurses library. So far, it works pretty well with VT100-compatible terminals, but win32 console fails to recognise the \033 code as the beginning of an escape sequence:
# include <stdio.h>
# include "term.h"
int main(void) {
puts(BOLD COLOR(FG, RED) "Bold text" NOT_BOLD " is cool!" CLEAR);
return 0;
}
What needs to be done on the C code level, in order that the ANSI.SYS driver is loaded and the ANSI/VT100 escape sequences recognized?
[UPDATE] For latest Windows 10 please read useful contribution by #brainslugs83, just below in the comments to this answer.
While for versions before Windows 10 Anniversary Update:
ANSI.SYS has a restriction that it can run only in the context of the MS-DOS sub-system under Windows 95-Vista.
Microsoft KB101875 explains how to enable ANSI.SYS in a command window, but it does not apply to Windows NT. According to the article: we all love colors, modern versions of Windows do not have this nice ANSI support.
Instead, Microsoft created a lot of functions, but this is far from your need to operate ANSI/VT100 escape sequence.
For a more detailed explanation, see the Wikipedia article:
ANSI.SYS also works in NT-derived systems for 16-bit legacy programs executing under the NTVDM.
The Win32 console does not natively support ANSI escape sequences at all. Software such as Ansicon can however act as a wrapper around the standard Win32 console and add support for ANSI escape sequences.
So I think ANSICON by Jason Hood is your solution. It is written in C, supports 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows, and the source is available.
Also I found some other similar question or post which ultimately have been answered to use ANSICON:
How to load ANSI escape codes or get coloured file listing in WinXP cmd shell?
how to use ansi.sys in windows 7
How can I get cmd.exe to display ANSI color escape sequences?
ansi color in windows shells
enable ansi colors in windows command prompt
Starting from Windows 10 TH2 (v1511), conhost.exe and cmd.exe support ANSI and VT100 Escape Sequences out of the box (although they have to be enabled).
See my answer over at superuser for more details.
Base on #BrainSlugs83 you can activate on the current Windows 10 version via register, with this command line:
REG ADD HKCU\CONSOLE /f /v VirtualTerminalLevel /t REG_DWORD /d 1
For Python 2.7 the following script works for me fine with Windows 10 (v1607)
import os
print '\033[35m'+'color-test'+'\033[39m'+" test end"
os.system('') #enable VT100 Escape Sequence for WINDOWS 10 Ver. 1607
print '\033[35m'+'color-test'+'\033[39m'+" test end"
Result should be:
[35mcolor-test[39m test end
color-test test end
Starting from Windows 10, you can use ENABLE_VIRTUAL_TERMINAL_PROCESSING to enable ANSI escape sequences:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/mt638032(v=vs.85).aspx
If ANSICON is not acceptable since it requires you to install something on the system, a more lightweight solution that parses and translates the ANSI codes into the relevant Win32 API console functions such as SetConsoleTextAttribute.
https://github.com/mattn/ansicolor-w32.c
For coloring the cmd you need Windows.h and use SetConsoleTextAttribute() more details can be found in http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms686047%28v=vs.85%29.aspx
In lastest win10, it can be done by SetConsoleMode(originMode | ENABLE_VIRTUAL_TERMINAL_PROCESSING). See https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/console/console-virtual-terminal-sequences#example
Maybe ANSICON can help u
Just download and extract files, depending on your windows os: 32bit or 64bit
Install it with: ansicon -i
I personally like clink. It not only processes ANSI codes, it also adds many other features so Windows Console behaves like bash (history, reverse history search, keyboard shortcuts, etc.):
The same line editing as Bash (from GNU's Readline library).
History persistence between sessions.
Context sensitive completion;
Executables (and aliases).
Directory commands.
Environment variables
Thirdparty tools; Git, Mercurial, SVN, Go, and P4.
New keyboard shortcuts;
Paste from clipboard (Ctrl-V).
Incremental history search (Ctrl-R/Ctrl-S).
Powerful completion (TAB).
Undo (Ctrl-Z).
Automatic "cd .." (Ctrl-PgUp).
Environment variable expansion (Ctrl-Alt-E).
(press Alt-H for many more...)
Scriptable completion with Lua.
Coloured and scriptable prompt.
Auto-answering of the "Terminate batch job?" prompt.
Ansi.sys (in the system32 folder) is an "MSDOS driver" provided as part of Windows XP, 2000, and earlier versions of NT. In 2000 and XP, it is located in the system32 folder (I don't remember the structure of earlier versions of NT). Programs that run in the DOS subsystem and use standard output can use ANSI.SYS just as they could running over MSDOS.
To load ansi.sys, you must use the device= or devicehigh= command in config, just as you would in MSDOS. On Windows NT 5 (2K & XP), each copy of the DOS subsystem can be given a separate config file in the pif/shortcut (use the "advanced" button), and there is a default file called CONFIG.NT (also in the system32 folder), which is used if the pif/shortcut does not specify a special config file.
When ansi.sys is loaded correctly, mem /d will report that it is loaded. On earlier versions of NT, you can and must load a proper DOS environment to load ansi.sys, and ansi art will work at the prompt. On Win 2K and XP, loading ansi.sys will have no effect on your "CMD prompt" because CMD is not a DOS program: it is a 32 bit Windows console program. For some reason that I do not understand, on WinXP, even if you load a fixed copy of command.com using "command.com /p", the command prompt will not be ansi enabled: perhaps when you do it that way it only emulates loading command.com?
In any case, when you use an actual DOS version of command.com, ansi is enabled after being loaded: you can demonstrate it's use with a bit of ansi art like this:
command /c type ansiart.ans
(here is an example: http://artscene.textfiles.com/ansi/artwork/beastie.ans)
CONFIG.NT (in the system32 folder) contains an example of the syntax for loading device drivers. You will need to be an Administrator to edit that default file, or you can make a copy of it.
On Win 2K and XP, the default "shortcut" for MSDOS is a .PIF file, not a .LNK file. If you create a .lnk file to CMD, you won't be able to set special config and autoexec files, it will use the default CONFIG.NT. If you want to use a special config file for just one DOS application, you can make a copy of the "MSDOS shortcut", or you can make a copy of "_default.pif", found in your Windows folder.
I found this tool to be working for my end.
Microsoft Color Tool from GitHub
Unzip the compressed file then open CMD with Administration permission.
Go to the folder where you unzip the file in CMD.
Then execute this command "colortool -b scheme-name"
The scheme-name needs to be replaced with any of these options below:
campbell.ini
campbell-legacy.ini
cmd-legacy.ini
deuternopia.itermcolors
OneHalfDark.itermcolors
OneHalfLight.itermcolors
solarized_dark.itermcolors
solarized_light.itermcolors
In my case, the command would be like this "colortool -b solarized_dark.itermcolors"
Click right on the console window and select Properties.
You don't need to change any value just click "OK" to save the setting. (You will notice that your font already contains colors).
Console Property
Then restart your cmd or powerShell.
The ANSI color should be enabled and working with the color scheme you chose before.
Had the same issue. I installed ConEmu and that one solved my problem.
Somehow in Windows you just need to call any shell command first, rather call the system function. Just in start of your main method put system("");, and don't forget to include stdlib.h.
I noticed this when I looked at some of my old programs that also used ANSI codes to understand why they work, but my new code is not
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...