Vim not recognizing aliases when in interactive mode?
If you want non-interactive shell (as default) but expansion of bash aliases, put your alias definitions in a file, e.g. .bash_aliases
and explicitly enable alias expansion in this file:
shopt -s expand_aliases
alias la='ls -la'
Then add this to your .vimrc
so the aliases file is actually read each time you run a shell command from within vim:
let $BASH_ENV = "~/.bash_aliases"
Try adding this line to your ~/.vimrc
:
set shell=/bin/bash\ -i
Then vim
will use an interactive shell (-i
) which reads from ~/.bashrc
, by default. See :h shell
for more information on shell
.
I see this is essentially the same as the previous answers that you say don't work. Please try the sample session below on your machine to see if you have similar results ( and post any errors / divergences from the output you see in the sample ).
$ cat .bash_aliases
alias test_alias="echo test alias"
test_func () {
echo test func
}
$ vim
[vim]:set shell=/bin/bash
[vim]:!type test_alias
/bin/bash: line 0: type: test_alias: not found
shell returned 1
Press ENTER or type command to continue
[vim]:!type test_func
/bin/bash: line 0: type: test_func: not found
shell returned 1
Press ENTER or type command to continue
[vim]:set shell=/bin/bash\ -i
[vim]:!type test_alias
test_alias is aliased to `echo test alias'
Press ENTER or type command to continue
[vim]:!type test_func
test_func is a function
test_func ()
{
echo test func
}
Press ENTER or type command to continue
As for why it wasn't working to begin with, when bash
is simply run (i.e. neither interactive nor login; default for vim and most other purposes), it reads whatever file is specified in $BASH_ENV
:
When bash is started non-interactively, to run a shell script, for
example, it looks for the variable BASH_ENV in the environment, expands
its value if it appears there, and uses the expanded value as the name
of a file to read and execute. Bash behaves as if the following com‐
mand were executed:
if [ -n "$BASH_ENV" ]; then . "$BASH_ENV"; fi
but the value of the PATH variable is not used to search for the file
name.
By adding the -i
, we make the shell interactive and it therefore it reads ~/.bashrc
:
When an interactive shell that is not a login shell is started, bash
reads and executes commands from /etc/bash.bashrc and ~/.bashrc, if
these files exist. This may be inhibited by using the --norc option.
The --rcfile file option will force bash to read and execute commands
from file instead of /etc/bash.bashrc and ~/.bashrc.
The *profile
files are read when starting a login shell:
When bash is invoked as an interactive login shell, or as a non-inter‐
active shell with the --login option, it first reads and executes com‐
mands from the file /etc/profile, if that file exists. After reading
that file, it looks for ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login, and ~/.profile,
in that order, and reads and executes commands from the first one that
exists and is readable. The --noprofile option may be used when the
shell is started to inhibit this behavior.
I got this to work, via the man page for bash
:
set shell=/bin/bash\ --rcfile\ ~/.bash_profile
Similarly, --init-file
works.
Note that \ -i
is not necessary, though it can be added to the command:
set shell=/bin/bash\ --rcfile\ ~/.bash_profile\ -i
Example:
~/.bash_profile
contains
source ~/.bash_aliases
~/.bash_aliases
contains
alias rdc="open -a \"Remote Desktop Connection\""
~/.vimrc
contains
set shell=/bin/bash\ --rcfile\ ~/.bash_profile
map ,r :!rdc &<cr>