The new :Shell command works just like :! except that it opens a Vim scratch buffer and prints the command output there. The scratch buffer will be wiped out completely when it's closed. An example of usage: :Shell ls -la The idea can be extended by adding shortcut commands for commonly used shell commands. This example adds some common version control tools: Now the version control tools can be used like this from Vim: :Git add % (The "%" expands to the current filename) :Svn diff -c 1234 :Bzr log -l 10 :Hg annotate %