当我尝试从我的 bash 脚本在后台运行 vim 时的奇怪行为

Question

I need to open 20 files in vim using a loop, here is a loop I created for:

for i in {1..20}
    do
    vim FILE$i &
    done

After this, I'll expect that I have 20 jobs of vim run in the background. The actual result is that a random FILE from the loop ran in vim, and when I try to type something, the input does not display on the screen, and there is nothing I can do. Sometimes it can be canceled by Ctrl+C . So why it happens when I run my script, and how should I run 20 files in the background using vim?

Also when I try to run vim FILE1 & in a terminal, all looks good to me, even when I run over 20 processes

Answer 1

Vim, at least the way you're invoking it, is a terminal-based program. That is, it puts the terminal into a suitable mode and writes data to it, usually including certain escape sequences, to draw on the screen and move the cursor in a certain way.

The problem you've having is that you have one terminal and twenty instances of Vim. Your instances of Vim are all expecting to control and monopolize the terminal and they are all fighting each other in this endeavor. As you might expect, this does not produce a useful result, and as such, you are probably not going to be happy with the result. There is no way to avoid this, since this is generally how terminal-based programs operate and it will be true for all terminal-based editors.

If you want to edit twenty different files in Vim, pass them all at once as arguments on the command line, and Vim will open all of them in one terminal. That command should not be run in the background,.

If you want to run some Vimscript in a noninteractive way, put that into a file, say, script , and then run vim -es '+source script' FILE$i . The -e option puts Vim into ex mode where it runs only the commands you'd normally type starting with : (the commands for the ex editor) and this can be scripted in a noninteractive way with -s . These commands can be run in the background if you redirect their output appropriately.

If your goal was to do something else, you should open a new question asking how to do the thing you wanted to do. We can then give you advice on how best to accomplish your goal in a helpful way.