pipe-to not grabbing selection as arguments

[jerabaul29]

Summary

I wonder if pipe-to does not grab the selections as arguments as expected - or otherwise I do not understand correctly the documentation about it, and it would be helpful to provide more details about how it should be used :) .

Reproduction Steps

I tried this:

1. hx
2. write the world "hello" on a line (without the "")
3. select the whole line with x
4. type :pipe-to touch

I expected this to happen:

5. the command touch hello is executed and the empty file hello gets created

Instead, this happened:

5. the editor displays an error message: Shell error: touch: missing file operandTry 'touch --help' for more information.

I have also tried a number of variations around this (putting spaces, " , etc)

Helix log

2024-07-24T17:53:10.031 helix_term::commands [ERROR] Shell error: touch: missing file operand
Try 'touch --help' for more information.

Platform

Linux, Ubunt 22.04

Terminal Emulator

GNOME Terminal 3.44.0 using VTE 0.68.0 +BIDI +GNUTLS +ICU +SYSTEMD

Installation Method

app image from latest release

Helix Version

24.7

[pascalkuthe]

pipe-to (and pipe) pipe arguments to stdin (like echo "<selection contents>" | <command>) and do not specify them as an argument. This aligns with the name. You can use <c-r>. to insert the selection contents as an argument.

[chtenb]

How would this be done with multiple selections?

[mweihs]

:pipe-to xargs touch

Also works with multiple selections.