I'd like to use Vim in the middle of a pipe. This existing post looks like what I'd like to do, except I was hoping to do it without Python's help -- only with bash. [It it helps, the environment is the bash shell in the Terminal IDE app on Android.]
Please, I know how to pipe a buffer through a command from inside Vim. That's great, but not what I want here. I want to exit Vim and pass the active buffer to stdout.
FWIW, I also know how to pass another command into Vim as input. Again, that's not what I'm trying to get here.
Take a look at vipe which is part of moreutils. It allows you to use any editor as part of a pipe.
ls -al | vipe | less
To use it with vim just make sure to set it as your default editor in your bashrc or cshrc or whatever shell you use.
EDITOR=vim
UPDATE: If you want a bash only solution you could use a script like this
#!/bin/bash
# create temporary file
TMPFILE=`mktemp /tmp/vipe.bashXXXXXXXX`
cat > ${TMPFILE}
vim ${TMPFILE} < /dev/tty > /dev/tty
cat ${TMPFILE}
rm ${TMPFILE}
For a more portable version please replace
vim ${TMPFILE}
with
${EDITOR} ${TMPFILE}