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At the end of this bash tutorial video link ,Spencer Krum shows a neat hack: how to open a file in vim at the line number where an immediately preceding 'git grep -n' search string was located. It seemed neat, but his code does not work as described on two different linux boxes I tried it with. It just always opens a blank file. original code here

My steps:

First, I made sure to have git initialized and files inside the directory to grep for. For example, I had a somefile.txt with three lines of words:

• its
• a
• mystery

Then I ran: git init;git add .; git commit

Then, modify your .bashrc file to redefine vim as shown below. Make sure to source the .bashrc file when complete: source ~/.bashrc

Finally, run the git grep -n command with a search term you know is in a file in your git directory that is your current working directory. Finally, run vim. It should open your file with the cursor at the search term line. But it doesn't: git grep -n mystery;vim