The more, on Unix-like systems you can pipe the output of tools like find, locate, tar -t, ... directly into Vim executing this script by using - as filename. Examples: vim -u browser.vim arch-hurd-i386.files find . | vim -u browser.vim - locate nox | vim -u browser.vim - tar -tzf boost.tar.gz | vim -u browser.vim - set mouse=a set foldminlines=1 foldcolumn=2 fillchars="+" foldlevel=0 set foldmethod=expr set foldexpr=FileBrowserFoldExpr() set foldtext=FileBrowserFoldText() function FileBrowserFoldExpr() let line=getline(v:lnum) let n=strlen(substitute(line,'[^/]*','','g')) if (line=~'^.*/$') return '>'.n elseif (strpart(getline(v:lnum+1),0,strlen(line)+1)==line.'/') return '>'.(n+1) endif return n endfunction function FileBrowserFoldText() return getline(v:foldstart) . ' ... [' . (