Call external command with stdin

Hi all,

I am trying to write an "extract method" function like this:

    vmap <leader>e :call ExtractSub()<cr>                                               function! ExtractSub() range         " yank selection into x         "normal gv"xy          let code    = shellescape(join(getline(a:firstline, a:lastline),"\n"))         let subname = input("Sub name: ")          " put extracted sub/method into the x register         let @x = system("~/bin/extract --subname=" . subname.' '.code)          " re-select and delete         normal gvd         " paste x into visual areaq         normal "xP      endfunction 

The idea is that I select a few lines of code in visual mode, pass them to my /bin/extract code and have it rewrite my code.

Originally I had this:

   vmap <leader>e :!~/bin/extract <cr>

 

That worked fine, but I read the selected code from STDIN. I can't figure out how to do that with a function, so I resorted to trying to pass it on the command line. That led to some garbled code (I have a bunch of \\ at the end of lines). Is there a way I can still have /bin/extract reading from STDIN in the function?

Cheers,

Ovid

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