When opening the command line and pressing the up arrow or down arrow keys, it shows the commands there were typed the last time. Is there a way to map this behaviour? For example when I press ctrl p, I want vim to show me my previous command (make vim act as if I pressed the up arrow). The same thing for ctrl n for the next command.
How can I make this happen?
The CTRL-P and CTRL-N keystrokes already do what you want, they search your command history. See :help c_CTRL-P, which explains how it will "recall older command-line from history."
The way CTRL-P and CTRL-N work differs slightly from the up and down arrow, in that the arrows will only go through the items in history that start with the characters you typed. So :e, space, up arrow will go to the last command you used to open a file for editing. See :help c_<Up> for details.
You can remap them so that they do the same as their counterpart, by using the cnoremap command, which creates mappings for keystrokes typed while in the Vim command-line.
For example, to make CTRL-P and CTRL-N behave the same as the arrows (complete respecting the prefix), you can use the following commands to create a (somewhat naive) mapping:
cnoremap <C-P> <Up>
cnoremap <C-N> <Down>
The shortcoming of this approach is that CTRL-P and CTRL-N behave differently on a wildmenu, so a more complete mapping would be:
cnoremap <expr> <C-P> wildmenumode() ? "\<C-P>" : "\<Up>"
cnoremap <expr> <C-N> wildmenumode() ? "\<C-N>" : "\<Down>"
That will preserve the original behavior of CTRL-P and CTRL-N in the wildmenu.
Related
I would like Ctrl-W to allow me to switch windows even when I am in insert mode. How can I make this change?
My motivation is to not need to press escape before shifting windows.
For <c-w><c-j> (as an example), you can do:
inoremap <c-w><c-j> <esc><c-w><c-j>gi
Then you can repeat this kind of mapping for every command you use:
inoremap <c-w><c-k> <esc><c-w><c-k>gi
inoremap <c-w><c-w> <esc><c-w><c-w>gi
inoremap <c-w>+ <esc><c-w>+gi
inoremap <c-w>- <esc><c-w>-gi
...
If you choose this simple solution, then you can finally add this mapping to inhibit the native <c-w> key (= delete the last word):
inoremap <c-w> <nop>
More "smart" solutions could be written, but they would imply a bit more code.
Note 1: as noted in the comments, the mappings to choose depend on which mode you want to reach after the keystroke: the suffix gi in the commands above means that you want to go back to insert mode in the new window; but you can remove this suffix if you want to be in normal mode.
Note 2: the suffix gi could be simply i, depending on the case : see :h i and :h gi
When auto-completing words in Vim using C-P and pressing Enter to select the first candidate, without first using the arrow-keys to select between candidates, Vim will jump the cursor to the next line.
Conversely, if I first use the arrow-keys to select between candidates, Vim won't jump to the next line.
How can I prevent Vim from jumping to the next line, when selecting first candidate using Vim's auto-completion feature C-P?
When popup (completion) menu is active, you're supposed to use <C-N> <C-P> <C-E> <C-Y> instead of <Down> <Up> <Esc> <CR> respectively (note that all these keys behave a little differently). But if you really like it you can use a mapping:
inoremap <expr><CR> pumvisible() ? "\<C-Y>" : "\<CR>"
See also Improve completion popup menu Vim tip.
I find a .vimrc file config:
" Move selection up/down (add =gv to reindent after move)
:vmap <D-S-Up> :m-2<CR>gv
:vmap <D-S-Down> :m'>+<CR>gv
I know the D-S-Up must be a key, but what is the key?
I type:
:help D-S-Up
nothing happened
:help key-notation tells you the meaning of all those <key> notations.
You can't expect :help D-S-Up to do anything because:
it doesn't follow established patterns like i_ctrl-r,
it is a custom mapping and Vim only provides documentation for its own commands.
<D> is the Cmd key on Mac keyboards, <S> is the Shift key, and <Up> is the Up arrow key.
So <D-S-Up> means Cmd + Shift + Up.
The Cmd key only works in the MacVim GUI.
Non-portable mappings are worthless.
One should use :xmap or :xnoremap for visual mode mappings, not :v*.
Non-recursive mappings should be used by default unless one really wants recursion.
Using someone else's vimrc is a bad idea.
By the way, here are enhanced versions of those mappings:
nnoremap <silent> <D-S-Up> :<C-u>move-2<CR>==
nnoremap <silent> <D-S-Down> :<C-u>move+<CR>==
xnoremap <silent> <D-S-Up> :move-2<CR>gv=gv
xnoremap <silent> <D-S-Down> :move'>+<CR>gv=gv
where:
<silent> prevents the commands in the mapping from echoing useless info,
<C-u> removes any default range inserted by Vim,
move-2<CR> is a more readable version of m-2<CR>,
== re-indents the line,
gv=gv reselects the lines, re-indents them, and re-selects them again.
Have a look at Move entire line up and down in Vim
In an answer you can read (concerning the line :vmap <D-S-Up> :m-2<CR>gv):
According to the shortcuts above, pressing Cmd-Shift-Up/Down will shift the block selection up/down. "D" is the Command key in MacVim, for Windows try "C" (Control), or "A" (Alt) (eg. would be Control Alt f).
Since I don't have a Mac myself, I can't check, but it's most certainly true.
I am a long time emacs user learning Vim. Emacs lets me navigate in the mini-buffer (where I issue commands like C-x C-s) using the same navigation keyboard shortcuts as in any other buffer. For example, I can navigate forward one character using C-f, even while in the mini-buffer. I could also use the arrow keys, but they are too far away.
Is there any keyboard shortcut to navigate in Vim's command mode (:), without using the arrow keys -- equivalent to emacs C-f, C-b? Thanks.
Adding to Greg Hewgill's answer, you can use q: to open the command-line window, where you have any Vim editing power at your hand.
Some from the Vim help:
CTRL-B or <Home>
cursor to beginning of command-line
CTRL-E or <End>
cursor to end of command-line
CTRL-H
<BS> Delete the character in front of the cursor (see |:fixdel| if
your <BS> key does not do what you want).
<Del> Delete the character under the cursor (at end of line:
character before the cursor).
CTRL-W Delete the |word| before the cursor. This depends on the
'iskeyword' option.
CTRL-U Remove all characters between the cursor position and
the beginning of the line.
I have these in my .vimrc
cnoremap <C-a> <Home>
cnoremap <C-e> <End>
cnoremap <C-p> <Up>
cnoremap <C-n> <Down>
cnoremap <C-b> <Left>
cnoremap <C-f> <Right>
cnoremap <M-b> <S-Left>
cnoremap <M-f> <S-Right>
With the default key bindings, vim does not offer non-arrow-key navigation of the command line editing. However, see :help cmdline-editing for an example of how to use the :cnoremap command to set up alternate key bindings.
I achieved that with <C-p> and <C-n> to navigate previous and next commands respectively.
P.S I'm not making any custom binding like Tassos did.
Basically, I don't want to use my arrow keys completely.
But for that to happen the Ctrl-P needs
to have the same functionality in
the command-line as my Up arrow key.
For Example, I type
:so
then I press Up, it turns like so
:source $MYVIMRC
but when I press Ctrl-P, it only goes to the last executed
command
:h camelcasemotion
Can anyone help me with this? It would be much appreciated.
In command mode, <Up> does “move to the previous command in the history that matches the string entered so far”.
In command mode,
CTRL-P has two functions.
After a Tab completion that has multiple possibilities, it does “show the previous matching value”.
Think of it as backward Tab. Most terminals do not distinguish Tab from Shift-Tab, but it and CTRL-P are the same mapping in GUI versions of Vim.
Without a preceding Tab completion, it does “move to the previous command in the history” (without trying to match the text entered so far).
You can remap CTRL-P to be the same as <Up> if you really want to:
:cmap <C-P> <Up>
You might also want to remap CTRL-N, too:
:cmap <C-N> <Down>