Sublime Forum

Execute a sublime text command from the a sublime-build

#1

Hello boys and girls,

Is there a way to execute a sublime text command from a build script (sublime-build file).

I would like to copy the selected text to the clip board and then execute my build command, but of course I would like this to be done automatically.

It would also be nice to be able to select the line where the cursor is located then copy it to the clipboard.

Thanks for your help

Philippe

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#2

This is indeed possible; the target key in a sublime-build file will tell Sublime that it should execute a custom command instead of what it would normally execute in order to run a build (the internal exec command). In order to do what you want here, you would need to modify the sublime-build file and also have a small glue plugin that does what you want.

An example plugin is below; if you’re not sure how to use it, there is a video here that goes over that.

import sublime
import sublime_plugin

from Default.exec import ExecCommand


class CopyThenExecCommand(ExecCommand):
    """
    Drop in replacement for the internal exec command that copies 
    text to the clipboard before executing the build.
    """
    def run(self, **kwargs):
        view = self.window.active_view()

        select_whole_line = kwargs.pop("select_whole_line", False)

        span = view.sel()[0]
        if span.empty() or select_whole_line:
            span = view.line(span.b)

        sublime.set_clipboard(view.substr(span))

        super().run(**kwargs)

The first thing this does is grab some text and stick it in the clipboard. Specifically, if there is text selected, it will copy that text to the clipboard, but if there is no current selection it will copy the line that the cursor is on instead. You can also add a key named select_whole_line to your build to force it to always copy the whole line no matter what.

When this copies a whole line, it doesn’t grab the \n on the end of the line that terminates it; if you want that, replace view.line with view.full_line instead. Additionally, this only grabs the text from the first cursor if there is more than one; slight modifications are needed if you want this to grab the selected text from all of the cursors and not just the first one.

To use it, you need to modify your sublime-build file to add some extra keys:

    "target": "copy_then_exec",
    "cancel": {"kill": true},

    "select_whole_line": true,

The target key is required; it tells Sublime to run the new command instead of the default when the build runs. The cancel key tells Sublime how to go about cancelling a running build started by the custom target; if you never cancel builds you could leave that key out.

The select_whole_line key is optional; it’s given to the custom command which will use it as outlined above to ensure that the whole line is copied even if there is some selected text.

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#3

Great, Thank you OdatNurd,
And how could I execute a windows exe in there and also parse a parameter to the function,
Is it done as in other language like:

CopyTheExecComment(ExecCommand, $filePath)

thank you

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#4

Inside of the CopyThenExec command you can do whatever you want; the call to super().run() is where the default exec command takes over and actually executes the build by running whatever program the build is set up to run.

If you want to do something in this command like execute some other program then come back to here and execute this one that’s also possible but a bit more involved, particularly if you want to examine the output of the thing you executed before continuing.

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