I am trying to learn how to use Vim. Apparently I have failed at the first hurdle since Vim (certainly on my computers) cannot open files from within itself. I know this must somehow be a mistake on my part since how can Vim still be around with such a flaw??
Anyway I have searched for the last day or so with no solution.
I have tried:
:e .
And Vim helpfully tells me that: "." is a directory. I was under the impression that this command would open a file browser in current directory, but it doesn't.
Similarly I have attempted other commands:
:Ex
:Explore
:Sexplore
:Sex
:Vexplore
:Vex
:Hexplore
:Hex
I have tested these from How do you open a file from within Vim? but nothing suggested there works.
All of these produce: E492: Not an editor command: <insert any of the above commands here>.
I am left with the conclusion Vim can't open files unless Vim is called from the terminal and the file is passed as an argument or the files happen to be in the current directory (where ever that may be) and you know the file's name.
Can someone help? I would like to be able to open files in other directories and list them but for the life of me nothing is working despite every guide I have read saying it would.
Thanks.
At the request from Zaffy this question has been solved.
At Robby Cornelissen's prompting I checked the MX's Linux's package manager and found that vim-common was installed but weirdly not vim. Once I'd installed vim :e . worked and I can now navigate the filesystem.
I have no idea the difference between vim-common and vim or the reason for the separate packages; Robby Cornelissen suggests that vim-common is probably a minimal or tiny version of vim.
Related
I am writing Bash script using VIM. I need to cd to a directory and run the command tool. The command tool is deep inside the directory. How do I quickly cd to that directory instead of manually typing the directory out in VIM ? In terminal prompt, I can get to the directory quickly using tab. It does not work in VIM.
Thanks
ffl3883
You can change to the currently edited file's directory with :cd %:h; see :help filename-modifiers. Likewise, if you trigger the tool from Vim :! % can do this quickly (and repeat with :!!). Or just :set autochdir, so that the current directory within Vim always follows the currently edited file (and you can then just reference the file via ./).
When typing file paths in vim (as I often do for shell scripts), I find filename-complete invaluable. Simply type <C-X><C-F> in insert mode.
N.B. It does not work in all cases (generally vim prefers the path to be a separate WORD), but a quick edit-complete-fixup isn’t terrible.
I was looking to get into learning a text editor for programming. However, I've quickly run into a little snag that I can't seem to find a solution to.
I have modified my /home/user/.nvimrc file to add some plugins and I can load it using :source ~/.nvimrc, however, it never loads automatically. :scriptnames shows a list of scripts in /usr/, but mysteriously absent from the list is the .nvimrc file in my home directory. Again, I can load it in the command line, but I'd like to not have to use :so ~/.nvimrc every time I open a file.
I am not using sudo to run vim.
How can I solve this problem? Is this something everybody has to do?
Could be this issue: https://github.com/neovim/neovim/issues/3530
Summary:
New location is ~/.config/nvim/init.vim
To keep ~/.nvimrc you can source it from the new location:
mkdir -p ~/.config/nvim
echo 'source ~/.nvimrc' > ~/.config/nvim/init.vim
Instead of referring to your rc file directly, consider using $MYVIMRC:
:e $MYVIMRC
:source $MYVIMRC
Reference: Learn Vim the Hard Way/Editing your vimrc
:help config lists the paths for each OS:
Unix ~/.config/nvim/init.vim (or init.lua)
Windows ~/AppData/Local/nvim/init.vim (or init.lua)
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/nvim/init.vim (or init.lua)
Vim has a fancy NetRW plugin that lets me type
vim ftp://ftp.example.com/
And get a nice directory listing, which I can edit files from by simply pressing CR while on top of them.
However, I can't seem to do this with directories. In the help file that appears when I press F1, it says I should be able to:
BROWSING netrw-cr {{{2
Browsing is simple: move the cursor onto a file or directory of interest.
Hitting the <cr> (the return key) will select the file or directory.
Directories will themselves be listed, and files will be opened using the
protocol given in the original read request.
However, when I use j/k to navigate to a directory and press <cr> to try to open it, I just get:
somedirectory: Not a regular file
Vim tries to access ftp://ftp.example.com/somedirectory. Notice that it doesn't add the slash signifying that it's a directory.
I'm at a loss for why this occurs. How can I simply enter that directory within Vim, without having to exit Vim and retype vim ftp://ftp.example.com/somedirectory/?
I'm running Vim 7.4 on Ubuntu 14.04.
Vim didn't seem to know that my directory really was a directory, as it didn't show a / sign after it in the directory listing.
Luckily, I found a way to force NetRW to act like a file is a directory: gd.
FORCING TREATMENT AS A FILE OR DIRECTORY netrw-gd netrw-gf {{{2
Remote symbolic links (ie. those listed via ssh or ftp) are problematic
in that it is difficult to tell whether they link to a file or to a
directory.
To force treatment as a file: use
gf
To force treatment as a directory: use
gd
So, simply press gd instead of <cr> to change to the directory under the cursor.
I'm still not sure why NetRW thought my directory was a file. The help message only said "remote symbolic links," which they're not (I think). It may have something to do with my web host (iPage), which might be using symbolic links everywhere instead of actual directories. Or maybe something just borked on my end.
When I open a file from Windows Explorer using right-click -> Edit with Vim, Vim creates a "Program" folder on the root, and a "Files" folder in the directory of the file I've opened. The Files folder includes Vim/vimfiles/doc. There are no files anywhere, just the directory tree.
This also happens when I run Vim without a file name as an argument.
A DOS Box flashes just before Vim opens, but it goes away too fast for me to read what it's saying.
I've used Vim for years and have never seen this behavior. This is the first time, however, that I've used it on Windows 8.1.
Any suggestions or ideas? I'm getting really tired of deleting Program and Files folders all over the place. Lol!
You could follow the steps on Vim-FAQ 2.5. Some relevant parts follows:
2.5. I have a "xyz" (some) problem with Vim. How do I determine it is a
problem with my setup or with Vim? / Have I found a bug in Vim?
First, you need to find out, whether the error is in the actual
runtime files or any plugin that is distributed with Vim or whether it
is a simple side effect of any configuration option from your .vimrc
or .gvimrc. So first, start vim like this:
vim -u NONE -U NONE -N -i NONE
this starts Vim in nocompatible mode (-N), without reading your
viminfo file (-i NONE), without reading any configuration file (-u
NONE for not reading .vimrc file and -U NONE for not reading a .gvimrc
file) or even plugin.
If the error does not occur when starting Vim this way, then the
problem is either related to some plugin of yours or some setting in
one of your local setup files. You need to find out, what triggers the
error, you try starting Vim this way:
vim -u NONE -U NONE -N
If the error occurs, the problem is your .viminfo file. Simply delete
the viminfo file then. If the error does not occur, try:
vim -u ~/.vimrc --noplugin -N -i NONE
This will simply use your .vimrc as configuration file, but not load
any plugins. If the error occurs this time, the error is possibly
caused by some configuration option inside your .vimrc file. Depending
on the length of your vimrc file, it can be quite hard to trace the
origin within that file.
The best way is to add :finish command in the middle of your .vimrc.
Then restart again using the same command line. If the error still
occurs, the bug must be caused because of a setting in the first half
of your .vimrc. If it doesn't happen, the problematic setting must be
in the second half of your .vimrc. So move the :finish command to the
middle of that half, of which you know that triggers the error and
move your way along, until you find the problematic option. If your
.vimrc is 350 lines long, you need at a maximum 9 tries to find the
offending line (in practise, this can often be further reduced, since
often lines depend on each other).
If the problem does not occur, when only loading your .vimrc file, the
error must be caused by a plugin or another runtime file (indent
autoload or syntax script). Check the output of the :scriptnames
command to see what files have been loaded and for each one try to
disable each one by one and see which one triggers the bug. Often
files that are loaded by vim, have a simple configuration variable to
disable them, but you need to check inside each file separately.
There is additional information on the link if the steps above doesn't solves the problem.
I've got Vim73 on Windows, and I'm trying to move files through the file browser.
It had been giving me an error about "move" not being executable (see this post). After some debugging I discovered the issue was in my vim73\autoload\netrw.vim file. I got the move command working, but there's another issue - apparently the directory that I'm browsing in with :Ex is not my current working directory, so the mv.exe command (from UnxUtils) can't find the source or destination.
The line from netrw that causes the problems is this one:
let ret= system(g:netrw_localmovecmd." ".shellescape(fname)." ".shellescape(s:netrwmftgt))
I tried wrapping the shellescape() functions in expand(), but that didn't seem to help.
Any idea how I can get the absolute path for the source and destinations?
Rather than trying for the absolute path, would setting g:netrw_keepdir to 0 work for you? It's not exactly what you want (which I suspect is to take the vim CWD and apply it to netrw instead of the other way 'round), but if you're OK with using netrw to manage your vim CWD, your commands might just work as-is.
Edit: Look at :help netrw-c for the verbose explanation. The c command in netrw might be enough.
Well, as it turns out, when your cursor is on the .. in the file list it considers that a directory.
All I really needed to do was move the cursor into the banner area before trying to mt - or mt from the parent directory.
Whoops!