Is there a way to “hide” Vim’s interface to see the underlying shell?

Something as light as buffer switching. So I can quickly jump there and back to check, f开发者_运维知识库or example, the output of the last !-invoked command.

I know there is the :sh command, but then you have to exit it to get back to Vim, so it is a bit heavy for the purpose.

I am also aware of http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Display_output_of_shell_commands_in_new_window but I am not a huge fan of splits.

Try Ctrl-Z, also accessible from the built in command :suspend. Does that do what you want?

If you do not mind not having scrolling, use

:!

(That is, run the ! Ex command without arguments.)

Otherwise, if you are running the terminal version of Vim, use :suspend or Ctrl+Z (the latter keyboard shortcut works in Normal and Visual modes).