The correct way to access a specific help file in Vim

vim

In Vim, if you type :help into the status bar, you get a window with this (contents truncated to the relevant bits):

*help.txt*      For Vim version 7.4.  Last change: 2012 Dec 06

                    VIM - main help file

...

USER MANUAL: These files explain how to accomplish an editing task.

Jump to a subject:  Position the cursor on a tag (e.g. |bars|) and hit CTRL-].


|usr_toc.txt|   Table Of Contents

Getting Started ~
|usr_01.txt|  About the manuals
|usr_02.txt|  The first steps in Vim
|usr_03.txt|  Moving around
|usr_04.txt|  Making small changes
|usr_05.txt|  Set your settings
|usr_06.txt|  Using syntax highlighting
|usr_07.txt|  Editing more than one file
|usr_08.txt|  Splitting windows
|usr_09.txt|  Using the GUI

Say I want to see more information about this item |usr_07.txt|, what command do I type?

I tried this:

Jump to a subject: Position the cursor on a tag (e.g. |bars|) and hit CTRL-].

But my terminal window has mapped ctrl - to "decrease text".

Best Answer

You can use

:help usr_01.txt

to access a specific file. Usually more usefully you can jump to a particular topic:

:help syntax
:help wq
:help CTRL-]

This last notes that you can also use Ctrl-Click with the mouse, and double-click works too.

You can also use g] to access tagselect, which offers a list that you can select from with just numbers and Enter. In many cases that will be a list of one item, but it still avoids using Ctrl-] at any point.

Some other commands you could use to follow these links are also listed in :help tagsrch.txt.

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