Zet - How do I pipe the vim buffer through an external command, for example jq, prettier and cat?

How do I pipe the vim buffer through an external command, for example jq, prettier and cat?

Use :%!${cmd}

Example use jq to format buffer using correct indent

:%!jq --indent 4

If you want to format a selection, eg prettier just a few lines:

Select the lines using visual mode

:'<,'>!npx prettier --stdin-filename test.ts

'<,'> is provided by the visual select --stdin-filename test.ts is needed to give prettier context of what parser to use by using a fake ts filename here

If you want to pipe the buffer to an external command but not back into the buffer(eg. to cat so you can copy from ssh) use:

:w !cat

Basically you’re writing out to cat.

#vim #prettier