On Sat, 30 Apr 2005, tsuraan wrote:

>> what features do a "properly embedded shell" have that a simple
>> "screen"-split at console (or simply multiple windows open) do not? I'm
>> not being sarcastic, i just want to know what i could be missing...
>
> Probably not a lot.  Sometimes when I'm coding, I'll have the screen
> arranged in quarters, and having one of those quarters be a console
> would be useful.  Being able to copy and paste from the console to
> something that you're working on is nice (I tend to use gpm for this,
> but using vim's copy-paste buffers would be more consistent).  It's
> nothing serious; I use vim full time, so I obviously don't consider it
> to be a show-stopper.  I'd just be really happy if having a console in
> vim were possible.

open up a screen session (man screen) and you can have both a console and vim
in alternating screen with cut-and-paste between them.  i use it all the time:
one window with vim, one running code/tests, one in console.

something like this will get you going:

   ~ > screen -S my_screen_name    # start a screen with a name
   ~ > vim a.rb                    # open up vim in first window
   ~ > Ctrl-a c                    # create a new console in this terminal
   ~ > Ctrl-a n                    # switch back to your vim

do a Ctrl-a ? for help and/or man screen to read about cutting-pasting.  this
also has the advatange that you can login to the machine from another host
(when you go home for instance) and re-attach to your screen and you'll be
exactly where you were in your vim session before.  this one is tough to do in
an ide!

cheers.

-a
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