vim - open stdin and files in split windows

Question

Is it possible to open vim with stdin in one window, and a file in another?

vim - starts vim with text from stdin in the buffer

vim -o file1 file2 starts vim with files in multiple split windows

Can they be combined? vim -o file1 - doesn't work; it dies with a Too many edit arguments error. I know I can use vim - and then :split file1, but I'd like to do it with command-line flags if possible.

Answer 1

Though you cannot use -o, you can execute any commands passed with -c:

$ vim - -c 'split file1'

Answer 2

I just found out another cool way to open from multiple temporary files (without reading from stdin, though):

vim -O <(sort file1) <(sort file2) (split)

vim -p <(sort file1) <(sort file2) (tabbed)

Of course you can execute any command within the brackets:

vim -O <(cat file1) <(cat file2)

(Inspired by https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/16443/combine-text-files-column-wise)

Answer 3

Based on the synopsis of vim's man page, the answer is no. You may specify multiple files, or a hyphen, but not both:

NAME
       vim - Vi IMproved, a programmer's text editor

SYNOPSIS
       vim [options] [file ..]
       vim [options] -
       vim [options] -t tag
       vim [options] -q [errorfile]

One way you may be able to accomplish your goal is using command substitution with file input redirection:

vim -o mine.txt yours.txt <(diff mine.txt yours.txt)

The above command opens three windows in vim:

1. Regular file: mine.txt
2. Regular file: yours.txt
3. Diff the two files, then redirect the output of diff as file input to vim.

The output of <(any command here) is essentially considered by vim to be just another file to be opened.