linux - What is a way to read man pages in Vim without using temporary files

Question

I want to be able to read man pages in Vim.

For some reason, it seems that Vim isn't able to read the output of programs through piping. E.g (man ls) | vi doesn't seem to work, bonus points for somebody who can explain why.

To get around this, I've been using the following little script:

tempo = `mktemp`
man $1 > $tempo ; vi $tempo

This script uses temporary files which I guess work fine, but I was wondering if there was a good way to read man pages in Vim without resorting to creating temporary files

Answer 1

Vim includes a man page viewer, :Man, in its runtime files.

Put this line in your vimrc:

runtime! ftplugin/man.vim

Now you can read syntax-highlighted man pages inside Vim by running :Man. For example:

:Man 3 printf

Even better, you can just place your cursor on a word in the buffer and press <Leader>K (K) to see the man page for that word.

See :h find-manpage for complete usage and installation instructions.