Vim with Powershell

Question

I'm using gvim on Windows.

In my _vimrc I've added:

set shell=powershell.exe
set shellcmdflag=-c
set shellpipe=>
set shellredir=>

function! Test()
  echo system("dir -name")
endfunction

command! -nargs=0 Test :call Test()

If I execute this function (:Test) I see nonsense characters (non number/letter ASCII characters).

If I use cmd as the shell, it works (without the -name), so the problem seems to be with getting output from powershell into vim.

Interestingly, this works great:

:!dir -name

As does this:

:r !dir -name

UPDATE: confirming behavior mentioned by David

If you execute the set commands mentioned above in the _vimrc, :Test outputs nonsense. However, if you execute them directly in vim instead of in the _vimrc, :Test works as expected.

Also, I've tried using iconv in case it was an encoding problem:

:echo iconv( system("dir -name"), "unicode", &enc )

But this didn't make any difference. I could be using the wrong encoding types though.

Anyone know how to make this work?

Answer 1

It is a bit of a hack, but the following works in Vim 7.2. Notice, I am running Powershell within a CMD session.

if has("win32")
    set shell=cmd.exe
    set shellcmdflag=/c\ powershell.exe\ -NoLogo\ -NoProfile\ -NonInteractive\ -ExecutionPolicy\ RemoteSigned
    set shellpipe=|
    set shellredir=>
endif

function! Test()
  echo system("dir -name")
endfunction

Tested with the following...

• :!dir -name
• :call Test()

Answer 2

I ran into a similar problem described by many here.

Specifically, calling

:set shell=powershell

manually from within vim would cause powershell to work fine, but as soon as I added:

set shell=powershell

to my vimrc file I would get the error "Unable to open temp file .... "

The problem is that by default when shell is modified, vim automatically sets shellxquote to " which means that shell commands will look like the following:

 powershell -c "cmd > tmpfile"

Where as this command needs to look like this, in order for vim to read the temp file:

 powershell -c "cmd" > tmpfile

Setting shellquote to " in my vimrc file and unsetting shellxquote (i.e. setting it to a blank space) seem to fix all my problems:

set shell=powershell
set shellcmdflag=-c
set shellquote=\"
set shellxquote=

I've also tried taking this further and scripting vim a bit using the system() call: system() with powershell in vim

Answer 3

I suspect that the problem is that Powershell uses the native String encoding for .NET, which is UTF-16 plus a byte-order-mark.

When it's piping objects between commands it's not a problem. It's a total PITA for external programs though.

You can pipe the output through out-file, which does support changing the encoding, but still formats the output for the terminal that it's in by default (arrgh!), so things like "Get-Process" will truncate with ellipses, etc. You can specify the width of the virtual terminal that Out-File uses though.

Not sure how useful this information is, but it does illuminate the problem a bit more.

Answer 4

Try replacing

"dir \*vim\*"

with

 " -command { dir \*vim\* }"

EDIT: Try using cmd.exe as the shell and put "powershell.exe" before "-command"

Answer 5

Interesting question - here is something else to add to the confusion. Without making any changes to my .vimrc file, if I then run the following commands in gvim:

:set shell=powershell.exe
:set shellcmdflag=-noprofile
:echo system("dir -name")

It behaves as expected!

If I make the same changes to my .vimrc file, though (the shell and shellcmdflag options), running :echo system("dir -name") returns the nonsense characters!

Answer 6

The initial example code works fine for me when I plop it in vimrc.

So now I'm trying to figure out what in my vimrc is making it function. Possibly:

set encoding=utf8

Edit: Yep, that appears to do it. You probably want to have VIM defaulting to unicode anyway, these days...

Answer 7

None of the answers on this page were working for me until I found this hint from https://github.com/dougireton/mirror_pond/blob/master/vimrc - set shellxquote= [space character] was the missing piece.

if has("win32") || has("gui_win32") 
     if executable("PowerShell") 
        " Set PowerShell as the shell for running external ! commands 
        " http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7605917/system-with-powershell-in-vim      
        set shell=PowerShell 
        set shellcmdflag=-ExecutionPolicy\ RemoteSigned\ -Command 
        set shellquote=\" 
        " shellxquote must be a literal space character. 
        set shellxquote=  
   endif 
endif 

Answer 8

I propose an hackish solution. It doesn't really solve the problem, but it get the job done somehow.

This Vim plugin automate the creation of a temporary script file, powershell call through cmd.exe and paste of the result. It's not as nice as a proper powershell handling by vim, but it works.

Answer 9

Try instead set shellcmdflag=\ -c

---

Explanation:

Vim uses tempname() to generate a temp file path that system() reads.

If &shell contains 'sh' and &shellcmdflag starts with '-' then tempname() generates a temp file path with forward slashes.

Thus, if set shell=powershell set shellcmdflag=-c then Vim will try to read a temp file with forward slashes that cannot be found.

A remedy is to set instead set shellcmdflag=\ -c that is, add a whitespace to &shellcmdflag so that the first character is no longer '-' and tempname() produces a temp file path with backward slashes that can be found by system().

---

I remarked on the vim_dev mailing list ( https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/vim_dev/vTR05EZyfE0 ) that this deserves better documentation.

Answer 10

actf answer works for me, but because of Powershell built in DIFF (which is different from the Linux one) you must add this line to your Powershell profile to have diff working again in VIM:

Remove-Item Alias:diff -force

Answer 11

I don't use VIM but Powershell's default output is Unicode. Notepad can read unicode, you could use it to see if you are getting the output you expect.