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Comment by darrenf | Hacker News Reader

If I’m reading this right, it’s “open a local vi(m) on a remote file”, by invoking a remote command. Is that right?

I’m wondering how it’s different in effect to just using

    vim sftp://host/path/to/file

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Almost, down the page it says:

  vi
  Invokes gvim on your workstation,
  passing it an scp://... URL of
  the file(s) you wish to edit

So it's just a more convenient way to launch local vim, doing something you could do manually.

suvi is neat, and bcp seems like something that I'd actually use.

Sure, but that makes all the difference. I often work on an embedded remote machine with quite restricted vim (can't use a custom config, particularly no language packages). When I am on the remote machine (typically I have to run local commands), I often discover I have to edit a python file (typically just minor edits). So to use vim sftp://host/path/to/file I have to open a new terminal copy the path and then open using sftp. For me that interrupts enough of the workflow, that I just don't bother and instead just edit the file on the remote machine using the restricted vim.

Can you install bcvi on that remote machine? (Genuine question - when I've been in similar situations, it also would have been a no-go to install a binary.

It depends, compiled binaries, no. If it's a shell script yes. Python or Perl maybe. But I agree ideally it would work by transferring a script (or aliases ...) across the ssh link and remove it afterwards.

Looks like it's all Perl:

https://github.com/grantm/bcvi

But it's not a single consolidated script.

does sftp require configuration beyond what you've already got working if you're ssh'd in?

I mean you run that command locally. You aren’t ssh’d in, vim copies the file to a tmp location and you edit it, `:w` writes it back to the remote.

ngl didn't know vim supported that so conveniently

Wow, I've been using Vim exclusively as my text editor now for 15 years and I did not know it could do this. Awesome!

Always learning something new with vim. For such a barebones looking editor, it's got a lot going on.

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