In bash one can edit the current commandline in $EDITOR by pressing <c-x><c-e>.
I am running bash inside a terminal buffer within Neovim. I would like to be able to press <c-x><c-e> and have Neovim open a new buffer (:new), in the same Neovim instance, with the current contents of the commandline. When I close that buffer (:bdelete) I would like to have the contents of the buffer replace what was on the commandline.
Is this possible?
I've now turned the script below into a plugin: nvim-editcommand, or if you don't mind starting you terminals with a plugin command nvim-terminus provides a few more features
Finally got it working in pure (ugly) vimscript:
" set the name of the current buffer, useful for setting the name of terminal buffers function! SetFileName() execute 'file ' . input('Enter name: ') endfunction " - yank from last line with prompt ('> ') to last line into register c " - clear commandline " - call function tnoremap <c-x> <c-\><c-n>:execute ':?> ?,$y c'<cr>A<c-c><c-\><c-n>:call EditCommandline()<cr> function! EditCommandline() " clear search highlighting let @/ = "" " - set an autocmd on the current (terminal) buffer that will run when the buffer is next entered " - put from register c (where the new command will be) " - remove the autocmd " - go to insert mode autocmd BufEnter <buffer> put c | autocmd! BufEnter <buffer> | call feedkeys('A') " get all text after prompt '> ' let s:command = strpart(@c, strridx(@c, "> ") + 2) " open new empty buffer new " make buffer a scratch buffer setlocal buftype=nofile setlocal bufhidden=hide setlocal noswapfile " put command into buffer put! =s:command " remove extra lines %join! " copy buffer to register when it is closed autocmd BufLeave <buffer> :%yank c endfunction It's not exactly what you asked, but it might be closer to what you really want:
In bash, you can type in vi mode! Just put type set -o vi into bash and you'll be able to hit escape to switch to normal mode. Stick it in your .bashrc file for it to become an incredibly useful permanent change.
edit: I just realized that this might be why you can't (by default) exit Neovim terminal mode with escape.
q:in normal mode do what you want? (See:help cmdline-window)