Temporarily disable path wildcard expansion in vim

Question

In Vim (7.3 on Debian Wheezy) I am trying to open Perl modules in vim using the following command...

:e `perldoc -lm Test::More`

But I get...

E79: Cannot expand wildcards

One word module names work fine, eg

:e `perldoc -lm DateTime`

It appears the colon is being considered a wildcard somehow, I've tried escaping with backslashes which makes no difference.

So, is there some way to either disable wildcard expansion for a command? or is it possible to escape characters in this context? and if so how?

I've searched as best as I can and the Vim documentation is surprisingly vague around wildcards in a backtick command such as this.

Note: I know there are other ways to get vim to open a Perl module by name but it's the wildcard backtick semantics I'm interested in.

Full vim version info

VIM - Vi IMproved 7.3 (2010 Aug 15, compiled Feb 10 2013 02:28:47)
Included patches: 1-547
Modified by pkg-vim-maintainers@lists.alioth.debian.org
Compiled by jamessan@debian.org
Huge version without GUI.  Features included (+) or not (-):
+arabic +autocmd -balloon_eval -browse ++builtin_terms +byte_offset +cindent 
-clientserver -clipboard +cmdline_compl +cmdline_hist +cmdline_info +comments 
+conceal +cryptv +cscope +cursorbind +cursorshape +dialog_con +diff +digraphs 
-dnd -ebcdic +emacs_tags +eval +ex_extra +extra_search +farsi +file_in_path 
+find_in_path +float +folding -footer +fork() +gettext -hangul_input +iconv 
+insert_expand +jumplist +keymap +langmap +libcall +linebreak +lispindent 
+listcmds +localmap +lua +menu +mksession +modify_fname +mouse -mouseshape 
+mouse_dec +mouse_gpm -mouse_jsbterm +mouse_netterm -mouse_sysmouse 
+mouse_xterm +mouse_urxvt +multi_byte +multi_lang -mzscheme +netbeans_intg 
+path_extra +perl +persistent_undo +postscript +printer +profile +python 
-python3 +quickfix +reltime +rightleft +ruby +scrollbind +signs +smartindent 
-sniff +startuptime +statusline -sun_workshop +syntax +tag_binary 
+tag_old_static -tag_any_white +tcl +terminfo +termresponse +textobjects +title
 -toolbar +user_commands +vertsplit +virtualedit +visual +visualextra +viminfo 
+vreplace +wildignore +wildmenu +windows +writebackup -X11 -xfontset -xim -xsmp
 -xterm_clipboard -xterm_save 
   system vimrc file: "$VIM/vimrc"
     user vimrc file: "$HOME/.vimrc"
      user exrc file: "$HOME/.exrc"
  fall-back for $VIM: "/usr/share/vim"
Compilation: gcc -c -I. -Iproto -DHAVE_CONFIG_H     -g -O2 -fstack-protector --param=ssp-buffer-size=4 -Wformat -Werror=format-security -U_FORTIFY_SOURCE -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=1     -I/usr/include/tcl8.5  -D_REENTRANT=1  -D_THREAD_SAFE=1  -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE=1  
Linking: gcc   -L. -Wl,-z,relro -rdynamic -Wl,-export-dynamic  -Wl,-E  -Wl,-z,relro -Wl,--as-needed -o vim       -lm -ltinfo -lnsl  -lselinux  -lacl -lattr -lgpm  -L/usr/lib -llua5.1  -Wl,-E  -fstack-protector -L/usr/local/lib  -L/usr/lib/perl/5.14/CORE -lperl -ldl -lm -lpthread -lcrypt -L/usr/lib/python2.7/config -lpython2.7 -lpthread -ldl -lutil -lm -Xlinker -export-dynamic -Wl,-O1 -Wl,-Bsymbolic-functions  -L/usr/lib -ltcl8.5 -ldl -lpthread -lieee -lm -lruby-1.9.1 -lpthread -lrt -ldl -lcrypt -lm  -L/usr/lib

Answer 1

This works for me with Vim 7.4 on Ubuntu 14.04, so upgrading to a newer Vim version might help.

Alternatively, you can work around the problem replacing the backticks with this:

:execute 'e' system('perldoc -lm Test::More')

To handle special filespecs, you'd have to wrap the system() in fnameescape() , but then you have to drop the trailing newline from the captured output.