Vim: open a temporary buffer displaying executable's output - vim

Question

I have found the :cwindow command to be very useful and I was wondering if I could get similar functionality using the output of my compiled code. I'd the output of :!./a.out to appear in a "quickfix" style buffer.
I've also noticed that even after taking the standard steps to prevent the "Press Enter to continue" message, it still happens at least once on :make and :!./a.out - using :silent to suppress this causes my tmux to go completely blank. My current workaround involves a mapping with a lot of carriage returns, is there another way?

Answer 1

Sure, you can use vim's preview window with a short function to execute the command, try this in your .vimrc:
fun! Runcmd(cmd)
silent! exe "noautocmd botright pedit ".a:cmd
noautocmd wincmd P
set buftype=nofile
exe "noautocmd r! ".a:cmd
noautocmd wincmd p
endfun
com! -nargs=1 Runcmd :call Runcmd("<args>")
Then you can:
:Runcmd ls
And see the results of ls in your preview window

Answer 2

I found this:
" Shell ------------------------------------------------------------------- {{{
function! s:ExecuteInShell(command) " {{{
let command = join(map(split(a:command), 'expand(v:val)'))
let winnr = bufwinnr('^' . command . '$')
silent! execute winnr < 0 ? 'botright vnew ' . fnameescape(command) : winnr . 'wincmd w'
setlocal buftype=nowrite bufhidden=wipe nobuflisted noswapfile nowrap nonumber
echo 'Execute ' . command . '...'
silent! execute 'silent %!'. command
silent! redraw
silent! execute 'au BufUnload <buffer> execute bufwinnr(' . bufnr('#') . ') . ''wincmd w'''
silent! execute 'nnoremap <silent> <buffer> <LocalLeader>r :call <SID>ExecuteInShell(''' . command . ''')<CR>:AnsiEsc<CR>'
silent! execute 'nnoremap <silent> <buffer> q :q<CR>'
silent! execute 'AnsiEsc'
echo 'Shell command ' . command . ' executed.'
endfunction " }}}
command! -complete=shellcmd -nargs=+ Shell call s:ExecuteInShell(<q-args>)
nnoremap <leader>! :Shell
" }}}
in steve losh's .vimrc - see which I shamelessly copied.

Answer 3

I have just discovered the :read command, which puts the output of a shell command into a window.
I went looking for this because I often want to grep for a file in the current directory which contains a certain string (and then open it into my current VIM).
Here is a shortcut I have in my $MYVIMRC:
noremap <leader>g :new<CR>:read ! grep -rn "
With this, when I press \g I get a new buffer created in a split window and find
:read ! grep -rn "
sitting waiting for me in the command area. Now I just type my search string, close the double quotes and hit <Enter> and the buffer fills with the command output.
Once done, a simple
:bw!
in that new buffer will kill it.

Answer 4

First open a preview window, and set it to autoread a file:
:botr pedit +:setl\ autoread /tmp/out.log
Now just run your command, and send the output to the file.
:!date > /tmp/out.log 2>&1
The result of your command should appear in the preview window.
However, we are still getting the "Press ENTER" prompt. A simple way to avoid that is to make a mapping that presses Enter for us:
:nmap <Leader>r :exec '!date > /tmp/out.log 2>&1'<CR><CR><CR>
I thought only two <CR>s would be needed but then found myself needing three.