:new|r foo.bat|1d|normal "ayG|q!
So why does the q! get lost,
Well, the ":normal" command swallows everything after it, so
the "pipe cue bang" is interpreted as commands to execute in
normal mode. You can work around that either by using the
exec command:
1d|exec 'normal "ayG' | q!
or possibly by dealing with it in normal mode
1d| normal "ayG:q!<cr>
and is there a better way?
While there are likely a whole mess of ways to skin a cat,
one that occurs to me that you can also use:
:let @a=system('cat foo.bat')
(or on Win32, you might be able to use "type" instead of
"cat") It's a little less cryptic.
HTH,
-tim
