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Accepted
Paul Erlenmeyer
Asked: 2019-12-01 06:26:15 +0800 CST

How to open terminal output with a texteditor without the creation of a new file?

  • 772

Let's say that I want the output of ls viewed in nano or tilde.

I would do the following:

ls >> tmp
nano tmp
rm tmp

I don't like this because it creates a dumpfile that I sometimes forget to delete. Some people suggest this:

ls | less

or 

ls | more

But I cannot do:

ls | nano

So how to solve this? I would need this especially when it comes to huge terminal outputs like the current processes where I would like to do a search afterwards.

command-line text-editor

5 Answers

  1. Many programs conventionally use - to mean standard input or standard output. Thus, you can open the screen output of a command in nano using - as the file name, as in:

    ls | nano -

    This will only work if your program does support that convention. This includes nano and vi on the terminal. Even the graphical text editor gedit supports it. However, pluma or mousepad do not support it, and instead will be instructed to create a regular file named -. In other cases, you cannot get around creating a regular intermediate file first.

    • 14
  2. Best Answer

    If viewing with tilde is really needed, you may script your idea
    Create a function in your .bashrc

    function tildeIt () {
  tmpfile=$(mktemp)
  "$@" > $tmpfile
  tilde $tmpfile
  rm $tmpfile
}

# $@ is all words typed after tildeIt
# mktemp creates a temp file and returns his fullname

    Reload .bashrc

    source ~/.bashrc

    Usage

    tildeIt command -option
    • 6

  3. If you have vipe, you can do

    ls | vipe >/dev/null

    The program vipe (which I believe stands for either vi pipe or view pipe) reads standard in, opens $EDITOR on it, and writes whatever is left when you save-and-quit to standard out.

    • 1

  4. On *nix, everything is a file. Thus, you can read the standard input from a file. In theory that is. Some programs get a bit iffy.

    Depending on the editor, you can read /dev/stdin. For example, cat works, but gedit complains that /dev/stdin is a special file and can't be edited.

    ls | cat /dev/stdin #works
ls | nano /dev/stdin #doesn't work.
ls | vim /dev/stdin #doesn't work
ls | gvim /dev/stdin #works

    What works with this method and what doesn't seem to be easily distinguished. So just try it with what you want, and it will either work, or not.

    • 0

  5. If you're using bash, you might try tilde <( ls ).

    See Process Substitution in bash(1).

    • 0