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Save a file you edited in vim without the needed permissions

Terminal - Save a file you edited in vim without the needed permissions
:w !sudo tee %
2009-02-25 16:27:24
User: skinp
Functions: tee
253
Up
Down
Save a file you edited in vim without the needed permissions

I often forget to sudo before editing a file I don't have write permissions on. When you come to save that file and get the infamous "E212: Can't open file for writing", just issue that vim command in order to save the file without the need to save it to a temp file and then copy it back again.

Add to favourites | Report as malicious

Alternatives

There is 1 alternative - vote for the best!

Terminal - Alternatives
:w !pfexec tee %
2009-07-29 08:35:00
User: ilyxa
Functions: tee
Tags: vim sudo tee
3
Up
Down
Save a file you edited in vim without the needed permissions - (Open)solaris version with RBAC
Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious

Know a better way?

If you can do better, submit your command here.

What others think

this is just awesome! of course you have to have sudo rights...

Comment by nottings 54 weeks and 3 days ago

awe-some !

Comment by pyrho 54 weeks and 3 days ago

Unfortunately this does not work well in gvim.

Comment by tutwabee 54 weeks ago

I wish I could vote this up more than once. Thanks!

Comment by Alanceil 54 weeks ago

nice - thanks!

Comment by waltharius 51 weeks and 5 days ago

I use

:w !cat > %

which is similar, but shorter (you can add sudo in there if you want).

Comment by spatz 47 weeks and 6 days ago

awesome!

Comment by Iany 44 weeks and 2 days ago

I always quit vi and sudo vi when I find I haven't write permission before. This command save me much time.

Comment by kylexlau 43 weeks and 3 days ago

!sudo cat > % won't work:

* the su-ed command is "cat" but

* > % isn't an argument for "cat", but a redirection

it's the same for sudo echo > myRootFile.txt

you could try with sudo sh -c "cat > %" but it's longer

so tee is ok.

comments welcome.

Comment by ioggstream 35 weeks and 3 days ago

greatest commend ever!!! tnx!

Comment by ilyxa 32 weeks and 4 days ago

how often did i miss this command, perfect!

+1 vote for greatest command ever

Comment by buergi 27 weeks and 2 days ago

i have added:

cmap w!! %!sudo tee > /dev/null %

to my .vimrc, so I can just use :w!! to write files with sudo

Comment by f3lix 18 weeks and 5 days ago

Pretty sweet. I'm an Emacs guy, but I'm impressed with the succinct way vi handles changing effective UID.

By the way, does this work for files that have spaces in the filenames? I would guess that it wouldn't. Is it fixable by double-quoting the %?

Comment by hackerb9 15 weeks and 3 days ago

You made me curious about filenames with spaces so I had to try it out. It only works with the "%". But as a general rule, I try not to name Unix files with spaces.

Comment by skinp 15 weeks and 2 days ago

Really nice! I just freaked out when I tried this with nvi (in Ubuntu 9.10)... it did not ask for my password and yet it wrote an /etc file. Please shed some light!

Comment by ez77 11 weeks and 3 days ago

Wow, this will come in handy. So will f3lix's :w!!

but I like to use abbreviations, i think they are cleaner than remapping:

ca w!! w !sudo tee "%"
Comment by jearsh 6 weeks and 3 days ago

Your point of view

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