How to emulate key presses on Vim startup

nerdtreevim

When I run vim, the NerdTree plugin opens a project explorer. I achieved this by adding the following line to my .vimrc file:

autocmd VimEnter * NERDTree

It opens two buffers but unfortunately I need to press ^W^W each time because the active buffer is the left one, where the NerdTree is located.

How can I make vim emulate these key presses on startup?

Best Answer

There are a couple of ways to give Vim keypresses in a command. The general way is to use the :normal command, which in this case would be

:execute "normal \<C-W>\<C-W>"

where the :execute command is needed to expand the control characters. For normal commands that begin with Ctrl-W, however, the :wincmd command can be simpler to use, e.g.,

:wincmd w

where in this case I've taken advantage of the fact that Ctrl-W Ctrl-W and Ctrl-W w do the same thing. Your autocommand would then be

autocmd VimEnter * wincmd w

See

:help :normal
:help :wincmd
:help CTRL-W_w

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Vim – How to Pass Vim Buffer Contents Through Shell Command and Capture Output

I would put something like this in my ~/.vimrc or a file with the .vim extension in ~/.vim/plugin/:

command! FW call FilterToNewWindow('myscript')

function! FilterToNewWindow(script)
    let TempFile = tempname()
    let SaveModified = &modified
    exe 'w ' . TempFile
    let &modified = SaveModified
    exe 'split ' . TempFile
    exe '%! ' . a:script
endfunction

Then you can just do ":FW".

It might be a good idea to change the command definition to require a filter script name argument to pass to the function instead of "hard coding" it.

Making the active window in vim more obvious

Following your template, you could vary different properties, such as colorcolumn:

augroup BgHighlight
    autocmd!
    autocmd WinEnter * set colorcolumn=80
    autocmd WinLeave * set colorcolumn=0
augroup END

This will color column 80 on your current window, while disabling it on the others. It's a bit less jarring than setting/unsetting line numbers.

An even less intrusive option, if you are used to highlighting the current line (set cul), is to do:

augroup BgHighlight
    autocmd!
    autocmd WinEnter * set cul
    autocmd WinLeave * set nocul
augroup END

It all comes down to your usage and what you're willing to put up with.

Best Answer

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Vim – How to Pass Vim Buffer Contents Through Shell Command and Capture Output

Making the active window in vim more obvious

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