Command output redirection to vim not working on OS X

Question

I'm trying to redirect the output of a command to vim using the - argument, but it doesn't seem to work on OS X. For example, if I type

$ ls | vim - 

on the command line on one of my Linux machines, the output of ls is correctly piped to vim. But when I do the same thing on any of my OS X machines, I get

$ ls | vim -
Vim: Reading from stdin...

And it just hangs there until I hit CTRL-D.

Any idea why this would be happening and how to actually redirect the output of a command to vim?

For reference, I'm using OS X 10.6.4 (and 10.6.5) with vim 7.2 (and 7.3) with bash as my shell.

Answer 1

I would expect a hand like this if their were problems with permissions. This page expands on Vi on OS X more than I ever could. Rather than just cut and paste their answers, I thought I'd point you to it to see if it helps.

http://macvim.org/OSX/index.php

Answer 2

Don't use macvim.org; it's very outdated. The correct site for macvim is http://code.google.com/p/macvim. Contained therein are links to the wiki and other sources of info.

Answer 3

Use the -f option for macvim. And the -R option to quit without being asked to save.

ls | mvim -Rf -

Another example... svn diff | mvim -Rf -

-f option

-f  or  --nofork    Foreground: Don't fork when starting GUI

-R option

-R          Readonly mode (like "view")