I’ve long used 【Meta+|】 to pipe a region to a shell command. I use it all the time to pipe troff input to groff and display the results with gxditview. Recently I learned that if you specify a prefix arg it will place the results in the current buffer. The easiest way to do that is simply to type 【Meta+1 Meta+|】. The same trick works with 【Meta+!】. For example, if I want to insert a directory listing into the current buffer I could type 【Meta+1 Meta+!】 ls.
Summary of Key Sequences
- 【Meta+|】
Pipe the highlighted region to a shell command and place the output in a ∗Shell Command Output∗ buffer. - 【Meta+1 Meta+|】
Pipe the highlight region to a shell command and place the output in the current buffer. - 【Meta+!】
Run a shell command and place the output in a ∗Shell Command Output∗ buffer. - 【Meta+1 Meta+!】
Run a shell command and place the output in the current buffer.
Update: prefix tag → prefix arg