Can you further integrate and present sequential moreutils vipe command output in vim using successive splits etc?

Question

I have used the moreutils suite a few times and I find it makes you think further about base utilities and is insightful(and fun). For instance, vipe allows running an editor - like vim - in the middle of a pipeline and editing the data before continuing the execution¹. For instance:

function refcheck_vipe() { echo -n "$@ documentation last udate: "; links -dump "http://www.gnu.org/software/$@/manual"| vipe | grep 'last updated' | vipe | cut -d ' ' -f 7,8,9 | vipe ; }
# refcheck_vipe grep

Every time(3) vipe is arbitrarily placed in the pipeline, and therefore called, you are presented with the data in vim, and once you quit, the execution continues. So here you'll get the webpage, the matched line and finally the isolated string. Maybe what is missing is that I keep the used buffers along the way to compare the contents in some cases...

---

I did not know you could multiplex the layout of the buffers in vim(!). Now I wonder if I were to launch my command on the vim cli, could there be a way to redirect every vipe execution "step" to a different buffer. And allow the tmp file to continue displaying the contents in some way after I quit. Indeed, you must do :q for the execution to continue until the next "step" so I don't know how to reconcile what I've just said with this. On the other hand I note that I can do :split new then :r! ls and the output of this goes into that.

---

To summarize and add context, I'm thinking about something like this:

command1 | vipe1 | command2 | vipe2 | command n | vipe n

would be wrapped by the answer to produce this in vim(the vipe part):
-------------------------
|       |       |       |           A buffer would open to the right side
| vipe  | vipe  | vipe  |           for every vipe command in the pipeline.
| step1 | step..| step n|           
|       |       |       |
|       |       |       |
-------------------------
|           |           |           Bottom left you see a "file manager".
|find . | \ | whatever  |           Its contents could be refreshed, from
|vidir -    |           |           time to time.
-------------------------
:cli

I know vim is not a window manager or multiplexer. The goal here is showcasing the processing of data in shell commands, while improving my vim skills². The focus is vim, but considering vipe reads the EDITOR variable, I would also read with interest a solution leveraging emacs.

So is there some alias/function/setup I could implement to accomplish what I have described(allowing comparison of the output I get in a sort of integrated way by adding buffers visually to the right side in the editor, for every vipe command in the pipeline)?

---

^{1. If I string together some commands with regular expressions and it doesn't work(often the case), I'll backtrack, removing commands and simplifying expressions in the pipeline until I can isolate the issue. So vipe can assist in some cases.}

^{2. As well as coping with the scenario where I have to use a system and Openbox or i3 is not present!!}

^{[..] Not referenced but making an appearance in the code sample, vidir.}

Answer 1

vipe uses temporary files (for me in /tmp) to pass and receive the pipe contents to / from Vim. Because of the pipeline, previous vipe invocations cannot be re-edited anymore; they've already been re-read by vipe and sent along the pipeline. So, it should be sufficient to save the previous vipe temp file (as the original one is removed by vipe), and re-open that one in the next Vim invocation from vipe.

The following autocmds do that for a single previous pipeline step. As I couldn't recognize any pattern in the vipe temp files, this broadly handles all files opened in /tmp; it would be better if vipe is reconfigured to use a separate directory or unique naming scheme (newer vipe versions support --suffix SUFFIX, so you can turn * into *.SUFFIX):

Sketch

autocmd BufWritePost /tmp/* silent! bdelete ~/.previous-vipe | keepalt write! ~/.previous-vipe
autocmd BufRead /tmp/* pedit ~/.previous-vipe