Starting vim from Windows PowerShell

Question

This isn't necessarily a problem, I'm more curious why this behavior occurs.

When attempting to launch vim from powershell, I'm greeted with the Open with window:

PS C:\> vim

If I specify:

PS C:\> vim.exe

Vim launches as expected. gVim launches as expected no matter if I specify:

PS C:\> gvim.exe

or

PS C:\> gvim

Again, it's not really problem, I just want to know why it happens and what I should look into to get consistent behavior when launching both vim and gvim from powershell.

Solution 1

There's probably a file called vim. that appears in the Path before vim.exe (or it's in the local folder you're trying to launch vim from) so it's getting called first when you type vim.

Solution 2

create alias for vim

      Set-Alias vim ' C:\Program Files (x86)\Vim\vim74\gvim.exe'
      Set-Alias vi ' C:\Program Files (x86)\Vim\vim74\gvim.exe'

you can change the path if installed in different directory.

Comments

[Bryan]

That was it, thanks! The file was created as part of the Git install for Windows: C:\Program Files (x86)\Git\bin\vim. There are other similar files for various GNU tools that exhibit the same behavior.

[Bryan]

gvim is a different application than vim and vi. There are times when I want to edit in a separate window, and times when I'd like to edit in the command window.

[GC 13]

yes @beargle, you are right with the console vim and the graphical vim (gvim) I would like to recommend the console vi editor [1] (ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/pc/vim74w32.zip) Later you can set alias to the executable of that. Yes you can run it on your console window. :)