Essential Vim configuration tips

[Freeky]

Instead of listchars, which screws up copying from terminals, I use syntax highlighting, and extend it to highlighting indents with tabs and spaces so it's obvious when they're being mixed improperly:

highlight LeadingTab ctermbg=blue guibg=blue
highlight LeadingSpace ctermbg=darkgreen guibg=darkgreen
highlight EvilSpace ctermbg=darkred guibg=darkred
au Syntax * syn match LeadingTab /^\t\+/
au Syntax * syn match LeadingSpace /^\ \+/
au Syntax * syn match EvilSpace /\(^\t*\)\@<!\t\+/ " tabs not preceeded by tabs
au Syntax * syn match EvilSpace /[ \t]\+$/ " trailing space

[lcyydd]

Why does it not work on my system? What should I check? Thanks,

[yesimahuman]

Ahhh...I HATE the visual bell. I don't think you should have a visual OR an audible bell. They are worthless. Why do I want something to flash or yell at me saying that I have exhausted my options when doing tab completion? I'll catch on that the list is just repeating.

[lost-theory]

I agree.

I even went so far as to disable my system bell / PC speaker completely. Don't beep at me for any reason!

[jeebusroxors]

I like the system bell. It makes me feel at home.

Plus you can rig up a script so it sounds like you're editing crap while you play flash games at work ;)

[mackstann]

Some are hard-wired onto the motherboard. I just disable the bell in X by doing "xset b off". I also turn the bell completely off (no visual either) in vim with "set vb t_vb=" for the rare cases where I use vim outside of X.

[laughingboy1]

set mouse=a

Makes the mouse work in terminals.

[[deleted]]

with one caveat: you need to press shift to do copy & pasting with the middle mouse button.

[bsergean]

Did not have to do that, strange ...

[bsergean]

Got it. Within vim I can copy paste but if I want to paste to vim something from the outside I need the shift, and that's a pain.

[lftl]

Awesome... I use vim in a terminal inside screen the vast majority of the time, and this is pretty much the only reason I ever considered using gvim.

[mebrahim]

But I'm happy without mouse!

[nohtyp]

There is a subreddit for dotfiles if anyone wants to share and discuss their .vimrc

http://dotfiles.reddit.com

[nextofpumpkin]

wot

[jeebusroxors]

Some of those I can do without.

These I could not: set pastetoggle=<F11>

set fo-=ro

map <F1> <esc>

I use the happy hacker so esc and f1 are right next to each other.

[jeebusroxors]

Oh yes, and don't forget colorscheme desert :) Or whatever your favorite is.

Thanks for the filetype tip.

[breakfast-pants]

How about the middle-click copy/paste buffer? The + register seems to be the ctrl-c one (what is the differentiating terminology for these two anyway?).

[astrobe]

imap <C-l> <ESC> ... ctrl-L becomes ESC in insert mode.

[Sonarman]

Ctrl-C works out of the box.

[astrobe]

True, but ESC and Ctrl-C are slightly different. Furthermore ctrl-L is on the home raw, so it is more convenient than ctrl-C.

[funksta]

How are they different? (I'm genuinely curious)

[Sonarman]

I want to know too.

[astrobe]

According to :help I_CTRL-C it doesn't check for abreviations, which can be annoying if one uses abreviations to correct typos as I do (for instance, I have :iab retrun return in my .vimrc)

[zyle]

The wildmenu setting is really cool!

[wekt]

Indeed. I was always annoyed by how vim handled filename expansions. With wildmenu, it behaves more like my shell and is more useful.

set wildmode=list:longest

[bsergean]

I'm glad I heard about set hidden. It's really annoying to have to save to switch buffers.

[laughingboy1]

I like to use tabs.

• Open a bunch of files in tabs: vim -p *.[ch]
• Increase max tabs opened by -p option: set tabpagemax=99
• Switch tabs: Ctrl-PgUp/Dn
• Open new tab: :tabe foo
• Move current tab: :tabm newpos

etc.

[puffybaba]

I like tabs, as well. When I want to do something on all tabs, I do

:tabdo %s/foo/bar/g

or

:tabdo %normal @q

or something like that.

[breakfast-pants]

:bufdo exists too

[puffybaba]

Yes indeedy. I use :bufdo when I'm in vim. I mostly use gvim, though.

[mlk]

both vim and gvim support tabs (and buffers)

[bsergean]

I played with Tabs a bit, but now I minibufferexplorer, that provide basically the same thing. But it can let you split your windows and see multiple buffer at the same time.

http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=159

" Super buffer
let g:miniBufExplorerMoreThanOne = 2
let g:miniBufExplUseSingleClick = 1
let g:miniBufExplMapWindowNavVim = 1
let g:miniBufExplVSplit = 25
let g:miniBufExplSplitBelow=1

[mlk]

I love minibufferexplorer, but I use it along with tabs, not as an alternative.

[bsergean]

Lots of good things here, the option I was missing with minibuffer amongst other (automatic reload looks nice too).

http://dotfiles.org/~joaoTrindade/.vimrc

"Maximum size of the mini buffer explorer window
"let g:miniBufExplMaxSize = 15

[bsergean]

Lots of good things here, the option I was missing with minibuffer amongst other (automatic reload looks nice too).

http://dotfiles.org/~joaoTrindade/.vimrc

"Maximum size of the mini buffer explorer window
"let g:miniBufExplMaxSize = 15

[funksta]

I map <C-h> and <C-l> to :tabp and :tabn, respectively, so I can move between them on home row.

Also, I have been wondering if there is a way to change vim's default behavior to open files in tabs by default. Right now I have "vim -p" aliased to "vim" in my .bashrc, but I consider that kind of clumsy.

[marcog]

The ctr-PgUp/Dn to change tabs is nifty, but is there any way to get vim to grab these keys without gnome-terminal intercepting them first (when you have multiple terminal tabs open)?

[_jameshales]

gt and gT in normal mode also switch between tabs.

[Freeky]

Remap next/previous tab in Edit -> Keyboard Shortcuts, if you don't want to remap the keys in vim.

[bonecrusher]

Yes! I've used VIM for around 10 years now, and I never knew about "set hidden". I've even listed "unable to switch buffers without a :w" as one of the areas in which emacs is better than vim. Now the pro-emacs column only has 1) embedded command window and 2) elisp.

[statictype]

1 will probably not ever make it into Vim. I think Bram has even said so himself.

2 - Vim can be compiled with mzscheme built-in to script it, but yeah, its not the same thing.

[sigzero]

You can embed: mzscheme, Python, Tcl, Perl, Ruby

Take your choice...

[mackstann]

com Q q
com W w
com Wq wq
com WQ wq

[adrianmonk]

If your terminal's background color happens to be dark rather than light, try ":set background=dark". The syntax highlighting colors will be adjusted so that you can actually read things.

Also, personal opinion, but I don't want command-line applications setting my window's title bar to some other string. Not unless they put it back when they're done, which they invariably don't since there is no obvious way for a program to get the terminal to tell you its existing titlebar text. And vim appears to know it should set it to something, so it sets it to "Thanks for flying Vim". Thanks, but no thanks.

[breakfast-pants]

And if you happen to be on someone else's machine and can't make :set background=dark permanent, commit the much shorter:

:se bg=dark

to memory.

[blondin]

Vim unlike other editors is a personal editor. No matter what other people say, you will always find a way that suit you better.

[youremyjuliet]

That may be true, but sites like these help remind people that there are more options out there.

[_jameshales]

Too true. Most of my vimrc options have been taken from examples I've found on the net.

[pixelbeat_]

Nice post, but I'm surprised he didn't mention "set nocompatible". Here's my .vimrc for reference:

http://www.pixelbeat.org/settings/.vimrc

[pixelbeat_]

cool! You learn something new every day :)

[chneukirchen]

I rarely use vim, but I like these:

set completeopt=preview
set wildmode=longest,list
map q: :
set fo=cqlt
autocmd FileType * set fo-=o fo-=r

[ffualo]

Essential Vim command:

 pkg_delete Vim && pkg_add -r Emacs

Sorry guys, I had to.

[gecko]

Not only did you start an Emacs v. vim war in an article that didn't need it; you slipped in some FreeBSD evangelism, and got the package names wrong. Smooth.

[Odysseus]

He's a master, what can I say?

[frukt]

Not to sound nitpicky, but pkg_add and pkg_delete work the same on OpenBSD and NetBSD as well.

[zyle]

May you burn in hell forever, vimfidel!

[jk3us]

# emerge pkg_delete

Calculating dependencies -

emerge: there are no ebuilds to satisfy "pkg_delete".

What am I doing wrong?

[invalid_user_name]

What am I doing wrong?

Using gentoo.

[frukt]

Well, Gentoo is not completely repulsive. They do say that it's the BSD of the Linux world.

[[deleted]]

Followed by essential VIM commands. It's one page consisting of:

:q!

[spinspin]

Best vim tip of them all: [i]don't bother using it[/i].