eshell: Is there an existing method of redirecting output to a buffer and then show the buffer in the other window when done?

Question

It seems like this would be a ubiquitous desire: capture the output of a command in eshell into a new buffer and when the command is completed, show the buffer in the other window. For example, I just did:

rails g scaffold --help > #<scaffold>

and then I did C-x 4 b scaffold although view-buffer-other-window is probably more what I want here.

Is there already an existing syntax to do this? If not, I'm thinking adding a plus sign:

rails g scaffold --help > #+<scaffold>

It appears that I use eshell-parse-argument-hook to do this?

Answer 1

In eshell, you can redirect stdout to an emacs buffer in a few different ways.

rails g scaffold --help > (switch-to-buffer "*scaffold*")
rails g scaffold --help >>> #<*scaffold*>

You can name the buffer whatever you want, and it'll be autovivified if it doesn't already exist. You can read more about it at the following links:

• Eshell: Redirection
• EmacsWiki: Emacs Pipe