In Vim, I know I can do this to see a list of recently opened files and select one for editing:
:browse old
But is there a way to choose several at once in one go? And bonus: can I open them into tabs instead of buffers?
I'd prefer a native (non-plugin) way if possible.
UPDATE: I finally settled for a plugin called MRU that's actually pretty good. It lets me browse and open multiple recent files into tabs, which matches my workflow perfectly.
UPDATE #2: I just learned that vim lets you save your current work state, including all the opened tabs/buffers, into a "session" which you can then reload the next time you open vim (saves by default into Session.vim, you can optionally append a filename to change that).
To create/save your current workstate:
:mks
Then later to restore from your session:
vim -S
Note that vim creates the Session.vim file in the current dir, not ~
The files are also stored as a List in the v:oldfiles variable. From there, you could loop over them and query for multiple files. That could be a custom mapping or command that you write.
Opening just the last N (here: 3) in tabs can for example be achieved with
:for file in v:oldfiles[0:2] | execute 'tabedit' fnameescape(file) | endfor
Related
I'm editing a source file in Vim, and in the middle of it I want to search for a tag (to understand some variable/class/method etc.), and I click Ctrl+] to look for the tag, and if the tag is supposed to be in a different file, it doesn't allow me to move away from the current file because it is being edited - it displays the usual Vim error - "E37: No write since last change (add ! to override)"
The workaround I have is to save the file first and re-open it and then look for the tag.
Is there a way to search the tags without having to save and reopen the file.
You can put the following line in your vimrc to allow Vim to edit another buffer without having to write the current one:
set hidden
See :help 'hidden'.
If you don't want to set that option, the alternative would be to use <C-w>], which opens the tag in a new window. See :help ctrl-w_].
Note that, as pointed out in a comment, you don't have to write and quit the current buffer in order to jump to a tag: writing it is enough.
Is there a way to automatically close the current location list in Vim when the user selects an entry from it, i.e., navigates to a listed location?
The scenario in question is similar to the one in the “How to open a file in a list of files in Vim?” question. I have an external program that creates a list of locations (across multiple files) that is then loaded using the lgetfile command. When the list is opened, e.g., using the lopen 10 command, the location list window remains open even after a location is selected.
As an alternative, I would accept any solution that allows me to have a Vim command calling a function with a single argument, based on which an external program is run to write a list of files and locations. I would want to open this list (either in the current or a split window) and be able to select a file (i.e., using ↑, ↓ for navigation and Return to select), so that the list is closed and the selected file is opened—much the same as the plugin buffer explorer works, just with a custom list of files instead of the list of buffers.
Maybe there is a (popular and maintained) plugin that could do that for me—perhaps with the added functionality of “Open in a new tab” and “Open in a split window”?
One can use the following mapping to automatically issue
the :lclose command each time Return is
pressed in the quickfix or location list windows:
:autocmd FileType qf nmap <buffer> <cr> <cr>:lcl<cr>
If you are using the quickfix window, and e.g.: lopen 10, you can still do :lopen 10 | lcl.
And I'd recommend to read this article in the Vim Wiki(a).
I know that I can close all opened buffers in vim by :qall.
I want to close event to pending opening buffers.
I have problem while reviewing my changes in P4 sandbox. When I have changes in multiple files and I try to review my code with "P4 diff" and set my P4DIFF to vimdiff.
It opens one by one vimdiff of all changed files. Now if I have 10 opened files and after reviewing 2 files I want to close diff for remaining 8 files. How can I do that?
Thanks,
This sounds like a job for hastily learnt Vimscript!
Particularly, the :bufdo, if, and match statements!
Try out the following:
:bufdo if match(expand("%"), ".vim") >= 0 | bw | endif
bw is for buffer wipe in Ex-mode (the : operator)
expand("%") returns the name of the current buffer
match(string, pattern) finds the index of a pattern in string
|'s separate lines if you're in Ex-mode
This matches buffers that contain .vim in their filenames and closes those buffers.
I'm guessing if these are temp buffers that are fed into vimdiff, they wouldn't have file names to begin with. Maybe you can use bufnr(".") to output the number of the current buffer. Then you can close all buffers past or before a certain number.
You can probably do even more buffer manipulation with certain plugins. I've been considering adopting one of the following three plugins that help manage plugins:
LustyExplorer
FuzzyFinder
minibufexpl
I can't speak for any merits, but I've heard them mentioned several times over the internet and on IRC.
I'm assuming you open vim with a number of arguments (known as... the argument list).
You should probably reset it:
:args %
You can also selectively manage the list (:argdelete). More information: :he arglist
DISCLAIMER: I've not used perforce, so I've had to make an assumption: that when multiple files have uncommitted changes, it will behave like a lot of VCS's and run the configured diff command (in this case, vimdiff) on each changed file in turn (I'm thinking this is what you meant by "opens one by one vimdiff of all changed files").
If this is the case, then vim won't have any references to any of the remaining files when viewing the changes for any particular file, so no amount of trickery within a single vim session is going to help you.
If you are willing to change your workflow at all, you may be able to do something with this vim script I found: http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=240
It claims to be modelled after the P4 GUI, so hopefully could fit neatly into your usage. From the overview of the script, it sounds like it should be able to show you a summary of which files have changed and allow you to view the changes.
If none of this is suitable for you, you could always try the old favourite Ctrl-C immediately after closing a vimdiff session for a file.
This is a bad hack but putting it here as no other answers worked for me.
Add "qall" without qoutes on top of your .vimrc .
:e ~/.vimrc
:source ~/.vimrc
:q
All files will close automatically after opening.
Then open vimrc in emacs or sed and remove qall.
Sorry to ask such a novice question but I am looking for a way to handle multiple files. I dont want to type huge file paths to open every file using :tabnew and :e commands
Fuzzy Finder is a handy plugin to quickly find and open files.
Basically you have to only type a few letters like test and you'll get a pop-up menu to open in your current path :
footest.c
bartest.h
footest.h
...
It is a bit slow when used on NFS but it is useful if you don't want to type long path and file names.
Alternatively if you don't want to use any plugin, by default gvim/vim includes a file browser called netrw.
To start it, just type :e . you'll get the content of your current directory, you can then navigate through the directory structure quite easily. (There is even commands to delete, rename, etc like a standard file explorer)
:help netrwfor more information.
A couple of tips that you might be interested in:
You can configure Vim so that the
current directory "follows" the
directory of the file you are
currently editing. That way you can
edit another file from the same
directory without having to type the
full path. This can be achieved by
putting either set autochdir or
autocmd BufEnter * lcd %:p:h in
your .vimrc
You can use wildcards with tab
completion. e.g. to edit
a_file_with_a_long_name.txt you could
do :e a*long and then press
Tab followed by
Return.
Usually, vim supports buffers for that. Use :badd to add buffer, :bdelete to remove it and :ls (or :buffers) to list all opened buffers. I believe, GVim supports these features too.
For example, if you wanna edit all .rb files in your app/controllers/pages dir (in the case of Rails project), you type vim app/controllers/pages/*.rb in your terminal and then edit the first file (buffer) in the vim window. When you've done with all changes, save changes as usual with :w (note: do not use q! option - this will close all your buffers you've opened) and then use :bn<tab> (or fully, :bnext) or :bprevious to switch to the next file (buffer). When you run :bnext on the last buffer, you'll be dropped to the first one.
You can open a directory in Vim, search for the file o directory you are looking for with '/' and type [enter] to open it.
How do you manage big projects (hundreds of files) using only VIM?
I personally start having problems in any larger than small project.
is there any way to quickly 'go to file', preferably with name completition?
same for 'go to class definition', when it is in another file
I kinda know all the VIM basics, so I don't have problem using it for writing scripts or quick editing some source code. But it gets really messy for me when I have to navigate between files.
VIM has excellent support for tags. Once you have created a tags file for your project, you can jump to a definition or declaration of a method, class, etc., including jumping across files, all inside the same editing session.
Try
:help tags
To generate a tags file for C/C++, go to your shell prompt (I'm assuming your system is *nix/Cygwin) and type
info ctags
or
ctags --help
I like simple solutions, my favorite way to navigate at the moment is:
Add to ~/.vimrc.local
set path=$PWD/**
Then type this in the editor to find the file anywhere in the current working directory (pwd)
:find user_spec.rb
You can use tab-completion on the filenames to find multiple choices as well, making this TextMate convert very happy.
I use a combination of NERDTree (directory sidebar), FuzzyFinder Textmate (go-to-file like TextMate's CMD+T), and Sessions (:h sessions) to help me deal with large projects.
I would suggest using some sessions helper plugin. I would mention what I use, but I'm not satisfied with it yet. Just Google "vim sessions".
One thing to note with getting FuzzyFinder Textmate to work is that it depends on an old version the FuzzyFinder plugin, specifically v2.16. Anything higher and you'll get errors. But it's definitely worth the trouble. While it doesn't have name completion, its search is smart so if I search for fro/time/actionsphp it will pull up the file apps/(fro)ntend/modules/(time)_tracking/actions/(actions).class.(php) (parenthesis denote what it's matching). It makes it very easy to pick out files that are only unique by their folder name.
As well as the invaluable ctags and the various associated commands. I also couldn't live without the project plugin, which allows you to have the files of interest associated with a project in a separate pane. I can't remember how much of my setup is customised, but if I want to open a source file called Debug.c, I hit:
<F12> " Opens the project pane
/De " Searches for "De", which is likely to be enough to find Debug.c or possibly Debug.h
<ENTER> " Opens the selected file and closes the project pane
I often then do:
:vsp " Vertically split the window
<F12> " Reopen project pane
# " Search back to find previous entry with the same name (to find
Debug.h if I was on Debug.c: my headers are in Headers/ and
my source is in Source/, so the headers come earlier in the list
than the source). I use * to go the other way, obviously.
<ENTER> " Open the header file in the other window and close the project window.
With this relatively short sequence, I can open any file and it's header in a vertical split. Since the project plugin window is just a text file, completion is achieved by using Vim's searching capability.
Starting in Vim 7.3, the :find command has tab-completion of filenames.
So if you set your 'path' option to contain your entire project (probably using the ** wildcard to allow recursively searching subdirectories), then you can use the :find, :sfind, :tabfind, etc. commands with completion to get to any file in your project. This also allows jumping to files directly with gf and friends if the file name is in your text, for example in an include directive.
With this method, no external tools or plugins are needed for navigating to specific files. Although, it may admittedly not be as fast or easy to use, and doesn't address the need for jumping to definitions. For definitions, I use ctags as other answers suggest.
If you are using ctags as other posters have recommended, then make sure you look at the taglist plugin.
Make sure you take the time to read the docs and learn the key bindings. Here are a few to get you started (from the TList window):
o - open file in new window
t - open file in new tab
[[ or backspace - previous file in list
]] or tab - next file in list
Exuberant ctags.
Use Ctrl-] to jump to the tag under the cursor.
Opening vim from root of your source file and extending path option to include all sub-directories therein.
For example set path+=/usr/include/c++/** for C++ headers and set path+=** for your source directory.
This ,then, opens a plethora of following possibilities.
1) Opening file by name or parts of it
:find file_name
You can use auto-completion and wildcard expansion with :find reliably. You type the name, it will locate the name. This works language agnostic.I am sure you will like it.
2) Navigating to files under cusror:
if you want to go a file path like #include "project/path/classA.h.
gf or gF - go to file under cursor.
Ctrl-6 - to come back to last cursor position after gf or gF
3) API lookup and navigating to the API location
[i or [I can be used to look up your function signature for word under cursor without leaving your workspace. [<Tab> to actually go to declaration. Use Ctrl-6 to come back to last location.
Without extending path, you can start navigating files by :Ex command and navigate and open your file. I prefer NerdTree over this though.
I use FindFile. If you open vim at the root of your project and run :FC . the plugin will cache all the filenames beneath your cwd. You can then do :FF to open a completion menu and type the name of the file you want (or rather, the first few letters).
Although I'm kinda hoping someone will point out a better solution so I can learn something, NERDTree has been good to me for getting to specific files with name completion as long as I have the tree expanded. The command when I need to get to a file is something like:
,d/foo.pyo (where foo.py is a file name)
,d to open the tree, / to enter search mode, the name (or partial name, or regex, or whatever) of the file, and then o to open.
Of course you may have to hit 'n' a few times if you didn't type enough of the filename or there are duplicates.
I admit it feels like a bit of a hack using NERDTree like this although it has gotten so far into my muscle memory by now that I don't even think about it.
Of course I use ctags too but those are only useful when you have a function near the cursor and need to get to its definition in another file or something. A lot of times I say "OK, I need to work on feature x now" and need to navigate to another file without any references nearby that ctags would really help with.
I'm using two plugins of mine:
searchInRuntime that completes filenames on command line. It is somehow similar to fuzzyfinder and lookupfile,
lh-tags which is completely experimental and undocumented. It offers two features: automatic and quick update of the tagfile on file save(ing?), and a tag selector plugged to <c-w><m-down> by default. You may want to check the renowned taglist plugin instead.
Both require my viml library lh-vim-lib.
Try SourceCodeObedinece. This one I developed to handle C++ 1Gb source files project.
I use it in pair with 0scan.
These two plugins are wrappers around the most popular Vim browsing tools: ctags and cscope.