Different behavior of `vim -R` and `view`

vim

Manual page on vim ($ man vim) states:

  view      Start in read-only mode.  You will be protected from writing the files.  Can also be done with the "-R" argument.

But, they have major differences.

When starting vim as vim -R the syntax coloring works.
But when started as view syntax coloring doesn't work.

view doesn't support vertical splitting, I tried Ctrl+w v, :vs and -O command line option.

Does view have a separate config? Or maybe it is completely separate from vim itself?

Best Answer

For some reason, on that PC (not administered by me) view is a symlink to /bin/vi, while vi is aliased to /usr/bin/vim system-wide.

And, of course, both vi and vim use argv[0] (the name they were launched with) to determine the behavior.

So, I just added alias view='vim -R' to my .bashrc.

Related Solutions

Are cygwin vim commands different than normal vim

Cygwin vim ships with vim's default configuration, which leaves vim in vi compatibility mode where it tries to emulate the original vi as closely as possible. Among other limitations, arrow keys do not work in that mode, and backspace just moves the cursor left rather than erasing a character.

Creating an empty ~/.vimrc is sufficient to disable vi compatibility mode:

touch ~/.vimrc

Having said that, i to enter insert mode should work anyway. You'll need to provide more details on where and how you're running vim. Also, are you actually running the vim that comes with Cygwin, or the native Windows version of vim?

Update

You can add below sets in ~/.vimrc to make is similar to default vim

set nocompatible
set backspace=indent,eol,start
set backup
set history=50
set ruler
set background=dark
set showcmd
set incsearch
syntax on
set hlsearch

If vim does not pick up your vimrc file, it may be looking for a .virc file instead. In this case, rename the file and the changes will be applied.

Vim, context-sensitive comment/uncomment behavior

To do what you want there is really no way to get around writing a function and mapping it your preferred keys.

To get started :echo synIDattr(synID(line("."), col("."), 1), "name") will print the name of the highlight group for the current word under the cursor.

You can use that information to determine which comment style to use.

A rough example to get you started:

function! s:MyComment () range
    for i in range(a:firstline, a:lastline)
        exe "normal " . i . "gg"
        normal ^
        let stuff = synIDattr(synID(line("."), col("."), 1), "name")
        if strpart(stuff, 0, 4) == "html"
            normal I<!-- 
            normal A -->
        else
            normal I//
        endif
    endfor
endfunction
vmap <silent> . :call <SID>MyComment()<CR>

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Are cygwin vim commands different than normal vim

Vim, context-sensitive comment/uncomment behavior

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