How do I run a terminal inside of Vim?

Solution 1:

Outdated from August 2011

Check out Conque Shell (also on GitHub). Lets you run any interactive program inside vim, not just a shell.

Solution 2:

I'm not sure exactly what you're trying to achieve (I've never used Emacs), but you can run commands in Vim by typing:

:! somecommand [ENTER]

And if you want to type in several commands, or play around in a shell for a while, you can always use:

:! bash (or your favourite shell) [ENTER]

Once the command or shell terminates, you'll be given the option to press Enter to return to your editor window

Vim is intentionally lightweight and lacking in the ability to do non-editorish type things, just as running a full-blown shell inside a Vim pane/tab, but as mentioned above there are third-party addons such as vim-shell that allow you to do that sort of thing.

Typically if I want to switch between Vim and my shell (Bash), I just hit CTRL+Z to pause the Vim process, play around in my shell, then type 'fg' when I want to go back to Vim - keeping my editor and my shell nice and separate.

Solution 3:

Updated answer (11 years later...):

• I would recommend using tmux instead of screen as suggested in the original answer below, if you choose to use that solution.
• Vim 8.1 now has a built in terminal that can be opened with the :term command. This provides much more complete integration with the rest of the Vim features.

I would definitely recommend screen for something like this. Vim is a text editor, not a shell.

I would use Ctrl+AS to split the current window horizontally, or in Ubuntu's screen and other patched versions, you can use Ctrl+A|(pipe) to split vertically. Then use Ctrl+ATab (or equivalently on some systems, Ctrl+ACtrl+I which may be easier to type) to switch between the windows. There are other commands to change the size and arrangement of the windows.

Or a less advanced use of screen is just to open multiple full-screen windows and toggle between them. This is what I normally do, I only use the split screen feature occasionally.

The GNU Screen Survival Guide question has a number of good tips if you're unfamiliar with its use.