If :h is used in VIM, it will automaticall follow |links| via CTRL+], opening new help topics and maintaining tag jumps list (CTRL+T will go back in jumps history). How to implement such behavior in my own file format? For example, i want CTRL+] on text inside {} to open a file named something.txt and CTRL+T to go back. How to implement this?
It's all done with tags. Essentially the vim files are simple text files, but they're supported by a file in the same directory named 'tags'. All this file contains is entries that look like:
'bg' options.txt /*'bg'*
'bh' options.txt /*'bh'*
'bin' options.txt /*'bin'*
'binary' options.txt /*'binary'*
'biosk' options.txt /*'biosk'*
'bioskey' options.txt /*'bioskey'*
Each line is a tag entry, split over three fields: the tag identifier, the file the tag lives in, and the ex command to find that tag: any ex command works; as can be seen in the example above though, the vim help files just use the search command: '/'.
You can either write a tags file manually, or use a program such as Exuberent ctags to create the file automatically. The tags file is generally read from the same directory the file you're editing lives in, but you can change this in Vim by adjusting the value of the 'tags' option.
More details in vim if you type ":help tags"
Related
I have indexed my c++ codebase with ctags, I can open a header file as follows:
:tag myfile.h
(It doesn't matter where myfile.h is located, as long as it is inside the indexed codebase it will open correctly in vim)
When I'm editing a c++ file, I can get the header filename as follows:
:e%<.h
e.g. when editing myfile.cpp, executing this command will display myfile.h on the command line.
A file can be opened in vertical split, by issuing:
:vs <myfile>
Now what I want to accomplish, is to have 1 command or function which I can use to open a header file of the corresponding c++ file that I'm currently editing in vertical split. Hence basically I want to combine the 3 above commands as if I would be doing a Unix pipe, e.g.:
:vs tag | e%<.h
" :vs to open file in vertical split
" :tag to find tag
" :e%<.h to get header filename
Obviously the Unix pipe doesn't work on vim, alternatively I've tried to write a function at which I assign the result of a command to a variable, e.g.
headerFileName = :e%<.h
Which apparently is not the correct way of doing this, I'm a bit lost here so I hope somebody can provide some help.
There exist several plugins that already do this (without needing a ctags database BTW).
For instance, with alternate (aka a.vim), you just have to type :VS from the header file or the source file to open the other one in a vertically split window.
Note that alternate have an option to tell where to find the other file (same directory, substitute on directory name, ...)
Otherwise, I suspect you are looking for expand() and :exe. If you write a function it may be
function! s:whatever() abort
let crt = expand('%:t:r')
vnew
exe 'tag '.crt.'.h'
endfunction
command! whatever call s:whatever()
I've created a help file under $VIM\vimfiles\doc. After nearly deleting it I wanted to edit it elsewhere and then copy it to the doc directory and then regenerate the tags.
The tags are generated , I can see them in the tagfile, but the file that I copy in, unique name, when I do :h sfcontents for eg and then ctrl-] on a tag I get the error "e426 tag not found"
If I edit the file in the $VIM\vimfiles\doc directory and then run either :Helptags or :helptags $VIM\vimfiles\doc the tag jump works
I can't attach a file but the help file looks something like
vim: filetype=help foldmethod=indent foldclose=all modifiable noreadonly
Table of Contents *sfcontents*
*sfsearch* - Search specific commands help
|count-matches-of-pattern|
|match-specific-column|
...
==============================================================================
count-matches-of-pattern
*count-matches-of-pattern*
:%s/pattern//gn
counts the number of the matches in a file eg count the number of spaces
not at the beginning of a line
:%s/[^ ]\+//gn
==============================================================================
*match-specific-column*
c=column l=line v=virtual column, ie ignore tabs and special chars
/\%5cx will match all occurrences of x at column 5.
/\%>5vx will match all occurrences of x after character 5. If there is a
tab character between poition 1 and position 5 the /\%5>v. against the
following line with a tab at position 4 will return the number 4
123 45
/\%>4cx\%<7cx will match all occurrences of x after column 4 and before
column 7
Or use |YankMatchesToReg| eg YankMatchesToReg /\%265v./x which copies
column 265 to register x across the whole file
==============================================================================
...
vim:tw=88:ts=4:ft=help:norl
I've ended up doing the archive out of the vim directory with the following;
nmap <leader>c :sp C:\Progra~2\vim\vimfiles\doc\commands.txt<cr>
nmap <leader>co :call BackupCommands()<cr>
function! BackupCommands()
exec "silent! !copy C:\\Progra~2\\Vim\\vimfiles\\doc\\commands.txt
C:\\Progra~2\\vimutils\\vimtips\\commands_back.txt"
exec "helptags C:\\Progra~2\\Vim\\vimfiles\\doc\\"
endfunction
I'd prefer to copy from the archive to the doc directory rather than the other way round. Any suggestions.
Straight from Vim's help files (:h write-local-help):
The first line is actually the only one for which the format matters. It will
be extracted from the help file to be put in the "LOCAL ADDITIONS:" section of
help.txt |local-additions|. The first "*" must be in the first column of the
first line. After adding your help file do ":help" and check that the entries
line up nicely.
Short: You're missing *sfsearch.txt* as first characters in your file!
Vim wont add to |local-additions|, therefore wont be searched, assuming your tags file was generated correctly. You can verify that by opening the tags file in the /doc directory and finding your tags there manually. There should be a tags file in each correctly helptagged /doc directory (:helptags <doc-dir>).
IMO, fear of "nearly deleting" a file is not a proper reason for editing in another location and copying back and forth. In fact, you've now introduced another risk of accidentally losing file contents via a wrong copy command.
Instead, use proper version control (Git, Mercurial, etc.), or, if that's too heavyweight, you can try my writebackup plugin, a pure Vimscript implementation. With the companion writebackupToAdjacentDir plugin, you can even backup to other directories.
That said, tag jumping should work even with your copy regime, provided that you run :helptags $VIM\vimfiles\doc after copying your help file to that exact location.
I use etags with vim on linux for source(*.c, *.h) code browsing. I have created a TAGS file bu giving command :
etags --members *.c *.h
TAGS file gets created but when I start browsing say one of the source files named 1.c which has a C structure variable defined and used in one of its function definitions(The structure name is a typedef in some other 1.h file). I open the file 1.c in vim and then I do CTRL - ] by placing cursor on that struct type, etags does not browse to the header file 1.h which has declaration of this structure.
This only happens when i have below line in my .vimrc, when i comment below two lines, etags based source browsing works fine.
set TAGS=./TAGS;$HOME
set tags=./tags;$HOME
I am trying to tell vim where to locate the TAGS file. starting from current folder till my home dir. What is incorrect here?
What is the correct syntax for above command?
Also does ctags/etags browsing with vim, show from where all a given function is called from?
If yes, what is the command to see that?
Locating tags file
Vim's settings are case-sensitive so set TAGS= is invalid. You must use set tags= in lowercase.
Vim will stop at the first match so you can't really expect it to search for a tag in tags and TAGS. These files can be searched in turn with:
set tags=./tags,./TAGS;$HOME " 1. tags, 2. TAGS, 3.… until $HOME
Also, search is not performed by etags, it's done by Vim itself.
Jumping to function calls
No, ctags and etags only index declarations. To jump to usage you'll need cscope
I downloaded the DrawIt plugin to draw a diagram in vim. I successfully installed that plugin.
Then I found DrawIt.vba file in my home directory and opened the file. It had the following content:
" Vimball Archiver by Charles E. Campbell, Jr., Ph.D.
UseVimball
finish
+-- 67 lines: plugin/DrawItPlugin.vim--------------------------------------------
+--484 lines: plugin/cecutil.vim ------------------------------------------------
+--1662 lines: autoload/DrawIt.vim-----------------------------------------------
+--401 lines: doc/DrawIt.txt-----------------------------------------------------
In that file, I placed the cursor in the + (plus) and I pressed the right arrow key(->).
It opens the specified path (plugin/DrawItPlugin.vim) of the file.
I really wonder about that one.
I want to create something like this. I searched in NET, but I didn't get any proper way to do it.
Can you help me do this?
Actually, that is not what is happening.
"Vimball" files are archive type files that contain number of other files in them. When you "source" such file, Vim extracts these files into specified paths, for example the content under plugin/DrawItPlugin.vim will get extracted into a file with that name inside your $VIM directory.
What you actually describe is an example of folding. Vim can "fold" parts of a file, so that they are hidden, and replaced by just one line.
+-- 67 lines: plugin/DrawItPlugin.vim--------------------------------------------
means that there is 67 lines of hidden content, starting with the text plugin/DrawItPlugin.vim. When you navigate the cursor into this text, it gets unfolded.
Type :he folding in Vim to read the Vim help on folding.
You can "jump" to a file whose path is under cursor with gf (goto file). Type :he gf for details.
Finally, using the "VimWiki" plugin, you can create files that link to other files, in a Wiki fashion.
When I switch buffers in Vim (using :bn and :bp), I want it to automatically set the working directory, BUT not to be the directory of the opened file. I want Vim to search recursively upwards for a file called "tags", and when it finds that file, set the working directory to the directory with the "tags" file.
Example:
:e ~/programming/projects/foobar/src/js/scripts.js
As you can see, "foobar" is kind of the "project root". Let's assume the "tags" file is in the foobar directory. Now Vim should look in "js", but there's no tags file. Then it should look in "src", no tags file there. Then it should look in "foobar" and find the "tags" file, then do:
:cd ~/programming/projects/foobar/
Is there a simple way to do this? :)
If your whole point is to get to the correct "tags"-file then this could be done easier:
set tags=./tags,tags;$HOME/programming,$HOME/programming/your/global/tags
The tags option accepts a comma (or space) delimited list of entries. In my example I have the following entries:
./tags this means it should look first for a tags-file in the current directory
tags;$HOME/programming this means look for a tags-file from the current directory up to $HOME/programming (that's what the semicolon does, see file-searching). If you don't specify the "stop"-directory using the semicolon then it searches up to the root directory /
$HOME/programming/your/global/tags lastly this is a tags file referred to by absolute file name
My example is probably overkill for your purpose from your description you only need this:
set tags=tags;$HOME/programming
But if you really need to change the working directory then you could add something like this (change lcd to cd if you have to) to your .vimrc:
au BufNewFile,BufRead *.js execute ":lcd " . fnamemodify(findfile("tags", ".;"), ":p:h")
Disclaimer: I'm the author of the mentioned plugin.
I think you could use the little codepath.vim. I wrote it because I was in need of a little function that would help me to reach my project root. The plugin makes the assumption you have a folder with all your code. Something like $HOME/code. Well, it provides the following function:
codepath#path()
I use in combinations with plugins like NERDTree or command-t. So I can open a NERDTree window in my project root. It really is a little plugin but I use it all the time.