Shell commands from vim

I know this is a bit late, but my preferred approach is suspending the vim process (Ctrl+z). You return to your shell/bash command prompt.

Then execute whatever command(s) you like.

Return to vim by typing fg

You can start a shell from Vim using the :sh command. When the shell exits (after the exit command or Ctrl+D) you return to Vim. The name for the shell command comes from the shell option.

For terminal Vim (on unix-like systems) you can also use Ctrl+Z to suspend Vim and get back to the shell from which it was run. To resume the Vim process, use the fg command.