What kind of things do you want to script?
Personally I use macros in an editor for "text manipulation", and drop to Python/sed/awk for "text processing". I don't find I have a need for anything in-between.
Personally I use macros in an editor for "text manipulation", and drop to Python/sed/awk for "text processing". I don't find I have a need for anything in-between.
I used just a little bit of code to make it so when I command-click a filepath anywhere, it opens in IntelliJ. This works in the browser, on chrome links, (github, gitlab, jenkins, error pages, etc) and also in iTerm on stack traces, spec/test paths. I made a chrome plugin, a shell script, and used the remote control plugin (not mine). The result was super-satisfying. I'll probably open source the bits soon. Now, I didn't script the IDE myself--the Remote Control Plugin did that work, but for an open source solution, I wouldn't mind building a remote control plugin myself.
Making this work got me wondering about doing the same with an open-source editor. I also would like to drive things internally, but I want it to be easy so I get a good return on the effort.
If on MacOS and you are using the apple native build, 'open -a gVim file' opens each file in the same editor.
If you want to do that on X11 (even macos X11.app) or MS Windows:
https://vimhelp.org/remote.txt.html#remote.txt
Basically (or gvim, yu might want --remote-silent too):
vim --servername foo --remote-silent filename [ filename ... ]
But the same doc explains how you can completely script vim from the command line:
Tell the remote server "foo" to write all files and exit: vim --servername foo --remote-send '<C-\><C-N>:wqa<CR>'
^\^N is what you press on a keyboard to enter normal mode from every mode except ex mode without a beep.
:wqa means do the command Write All and Quit.
so with --remote-send you can send any sequence of key-strokes to act on buffers.
You probably want to read from https://vimhelp.org/intro.txt.html#notation to learn the fundamentals.
I'd avoid neovim initially until you learn enough to decided if you want it - pros and cons both ways.