用换行符将参数传递给vim中的外部命令

Question

When I'm interacting with the shell or writing a bash script I can do:

somecmd "some
arg"

Say now that I want to do the same in vim command-line mode:

:!somecmd "some<Enter>arg"

obviously won't work: as soon as I press <Enter> the command is executed. But neither the following do:

:!somecmd "some<C-V><Enter>arg"
:!somecmd "some<C-V>x0Aarg"

The first one inserts a carriage return instead of a line feed, which is right. The second one will break the command in two, trying to execute somecmd "some<CV> first and then arg" , both of which fail miserably.

I guess I could work around this using some echo -e command substitution, or embedding $'\\n' , but is it possible to type it directly in vim's command-line? I don't fully understand why the "some<CV>x0Aarg" form doesn't work while $'some\\narg' does. Is vim parsing the string previously to shell evaluation?

Answer 1

Well, I've found the answer myself, but I'm leaving here for further reference anyway. The documentation of :! states:

A newline character ends {cmd}, what follows is interpreted as a following ":" command. However, if there is a backslash before the newline it is removed and {cmd} continues. It doesn't matter how many backslashes are before the newline, only one is removed.

So you (I) should type "some\\<CV>x0Aarg" instead of "some<CV>x0Aarg" .

Plus, I could have done it using the system() function instead of the :! command:

:call system("somecmd 'some<C-V>x0Aarg'")