Dtyjlui

I am in vim all day lately, practicing code. Often times when I want to do something from the prompt - I will use a key binding for :!bash and do what ever I need to do, then type exit to return to the vim script I am working on.

sometimes I forget that I am in a shell and need to poke around to find my script. Is there a way to set it up so that my prompt says "vim $:" or something similar?

I suppose I could try to create a .bashrc_for_vim and run source .bashrc_for_vim or something like that, but that seems pretty clunky.

Has anyone here figured out an elegant way to do this?

I make use of the $SHLVL environment variable, described in man bash as

SHLVL  Incremented by one each time an instance of bash is started.

In my ~/.bashrc:

# set a variable to reflect SHLVL > 1

if [[ $SHLVL -gt 1 ]] ; then

    export SUBSHELL="${SUBSHELL:+$SUBSHELL}+"

else

    export SUBSHELL=""



fi

I use this later in setting up my PS1 to add a "+" for each level down.

if [[ "$color_prompt" = yes ]]; then

#             chroot?                       Depth      green       user@host nocolor  :   green      $PWD  ref      (status) off   $ or # space             

    PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}${SUBSHELL}[33[01;32m]u@h[33[00m]:[33[01;34m]w[33[1;31m]($?)[33[00m]$ '

else

    PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}${SUBSHELL}u@h:w$ '

fi

unset color_prompt force_color_prompt 

In use, it looks like:

walt@bat:~(0)$ uptime

 22:57:48 up 2 days,  9:51,  2 users,  load average: 2.23, 0.75, 0.41

             # start a subshell, see the first "+" appear

walt@bat:~(0)$ bash

             # start a 2nd subshell, see the second "+" appear

+walt@bat:~(0)$ bash

             # Start vim, then do :!bash

++walt@bat:~(0)$ vim foo



             # here, underneath vim, look at the process tree leading to here

+++walt@bat:~(0)$ ps -fp$$

UID        PID  PPID  C STIME TTY          TIME CMD

walt      6803  6802  0 23:10 pts/21   00:00:00 bash

+++walt@bat:~(0)$ ps -fp$$,6802

UID        PID  PPID  C STIME TTY          TIME CMD

walt      6802  6732  0 23:10 pts/21   00:00:00 vim foo

walt      6803  6802  0 23:10 pts/21   00:00:00 bash

+++walt@bat:~(0)$ ps -fp$$,6802,6732

UID        PID  PPID  C STIME TTY          TIME CMD

walt      6732  6662  0 23:10 pts/21   00:00:00 bash

walt      6802  6732  0 23:10 pts/21   00:00:00 vim foo

walt      6803  6802  0 23:10 pts/21   00:00:00 bash

+++walt@bat:~(0)$ ps -fp$$,6802,6732,6662

UID        PID  PPID  C STIME TTY          TIME CMD

walt      6662  5932  0 23:10 pts/21   00:00:00 bash

walt      6732  6662  0 23:10 pts/21   00:00:00 bash

walt      6802  6732  0 23:10 pts/21   00:00:00 vim foo

walt      6803  6802  0 23:10 pts/21   00:00:00 bash

+++walt@bat:~(0)$ ps -fp$$,6802,6732,6662,5932

UID        PID  PPID  C STIME TTY          TIME CMD

walt      5932  5795  0 Jan29 pts/21   00:00:00 bash

walt      6662  5932  0 23:10 pts/21   00:00:00 bash

walt      6732  6662  0 23:10 pts/21   00:00:00 bash

walt      6802  6732  0 23:10 pts/21   00:00:00 vim foo

walt      6803  6802  0 23:10 pts/21   00:00:00 bash

+++walt@bat:~(0)$ ps -fp$$,6802,6732,6662,5932,5795

UID        PID  PPID  C STIME TTY          TIME CMD

walt      5795  5070  0 Jan29 ?        00:00:37 /usr/lib/gnome-terminal/gnome-terminal-server

walt      5932  5795  0 Jan29 pts/21   00:00:00 bash

walt      6662  5932  0 23:10 pts/21   00:00:00 bash

walt      6732  6662  0 23:10 pts/21   00:00:00 bash

walt      6802  6732  0 23:10 pts/21   00:00:00 vim foo

walt      6803  6802  0 23:10 pts/21   00:00:00 bash

                # now unwind, returning to vim

+++walt@bat:~(0)$ exit



                # back in vim, :q!

Press ENTER or type command to continue

                # unwind

++walt@bat:~(0)$ exit

                # unwind

+walt@bat:~(0)$ exit

               # back at the top level

walt@bat:~(0)$ : and I'm out

Vim sets the VIMRUNTIME (and VIM) environment variables within the shell from :sh or :!bash, so you can detect it that way in your .bashrc:

if [ "$VIMRUNTIME" ]

then

    PS1="vim: $PS1"

fi

The above will prefix your existing prompt with "vim: ". You could change it to something else, like just vim $:, if you wanted. Put that at the end of the file so that your normal prompt has been set up by then, so you can either use it or replace it.

You can't do the same for Ctrl-Z because that really does return you to your original shell - it's not a new session, it's the one you started vim from in the first place, so it has the same environment and settings as you started with.