Bash: Kill Vim when "Vim: Warning: Output not to a terminal"

You can just type this and hit enter, even though it is not showing up in the stdout it is still being input:

Or the vim short cut
ZQ
Capital letters. You can use it in normal mode :-)

You can prevent it from starting in the first place easily enough. Consider putting the following function definition in your .bashrc:

vim() {
  [ -t 1 ] || { echo "Not starting vim without stdout to TTY!" >&2; return 1; }
  command vim "$@"
}

The command builtin prevents recursing, by ensuring that it invokes an external command (rather than just calling the function again).

Similarly, you could create a script $HOME/bin/vim:

#!/bin/sh
if [ -t 1 ]; then
  exec /usr/bin/vim "$@"
else
  echo "Not starting vim without stdout to TTY!" >&2
  exit 1
fi

...put $HOME/bin first in your PATH, and let that shim do the work without relying on a shell function.

Not aware of any configuration option that does this, but when this happens if you type :q<Enter>, it will quit vim.

Also, while Ctrl-C will not work, Ctrl-Z will put vim in the background and then you can kill it with kill %1.

Related