bash - Use VIM to pass options to PDF reader

10
2013-11
  • Daeden

    I have a BASH script that recompiles a latex document and reopens it up using my PDF reader when the buffer is written back. The command in my '.vimrc' looks like this:

    autocmd BufWritePost *.tex !~/scripts/latex_update.sh %

    This works well, but the reader always opens the PDF to the first page. This is inconvenient since I have to scroll to look at the changes I just made. I would like to set a VIM variable called 'page_num' and pass it as a second argument to my script.

    I have tried this in VIM:

    :let g:page_num=2

    I then changed my 'autocmd' to:

     autocmd BufWritePost *.tex !~/scripts/latex_update.sh % g:page_num

    However, the global 'page_num' variable does not get replaced with its value. How can I get VIM to pass the value of 'page_num'?

    Thanks!

    • Answers
  • garyjohn

    Using :exe to expand the variable before executing the rest of the command should work:

    autocmd BufWritePost *.txt exe '!~/scripts/latex_update.sh %' g:page_num

    Note that you don't need to concatenate (the . operator) or put a space before g:page_num since :exe does that as part of its argument expansion.


    • Related Question

    vimrc - VIM: Disable Swap
  • Nerdling

    How does one disable swap files for VIM via .vimrc?


    • Related Answers
  • ennuikiller 
    set nobackup
set nowritebackup
set noswapfile
  • John T

    Throw this into your .vimrc:

    set noswapfile
  • Kevin Panko

    I would not disable swap files completely because they are used for recovery if vim crashes.

    Instead, put them into a temp folder so that they are not scattered all over:

    if has("win32")
   set directory=c:\\tmp,c:\\temp
elseif has("unix")
   set directory=/tmp
endif
  • Kevin M

    start vim with the "-n" argument:

    vim -n <file>