This # version is the fault of Benji Fisher, (with modifications by Nico # Weber and Bjorn Winckler, Aug 13 2007. # Based on a script by Wout Mertens and suggestions from Laurent Bihanic. If you make links to this script as view, # gvim, etc., then it will peek at the name used to call it and set options # appropriately. #!/bin/sh # This shell script passes all its arguments to the binary inside the # MacVim.app application bundle. Hopefully someone can contribute fixes to these problems! These are both irritating, but I feel the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. You (apparently) can’t pass extra parameters when using –remote-tab-silent, so tricks like mvim /etc/hosts +5 to have it open with the cursor on line 5 will not work. –remote-tab-silent doesn’t seem to work with listening on stdin, so the script always pops it out into a new window. I am not much of a bash hacker though, so there are a few caveats… 2 Additionally, it checks for args and if none are present (or just -) the script invokes stdin.

To fix this I modified the script to check for an existing macvim process, and if it exists attach tabs to it. It creates a new window (rather than a new tab) when you invoke it and it also won’t take stdin as input unless you pass a dash 1. This is a wonderful tool, but does possess some idiosyncrasies. MacVim comes with a clever script called mvim which allows you to open files in MacVim via the command line (much like mate for TextMate).

Macvim command line