This view in vim

vim

What is this view in vim called, and what is it for?

Somehow when I type colon to enter a command in vim I accidentally bring up a view that looks like this. But I can't get it to happen consistently, and I don't know what it is.

Edit:
It seems to happen if I type "q:", instead of ":q".

Best Answer

It's the command-line window (keyboard shortcut q:, quit with ctrl+c,ctrl+c)

It shows a history of your previous commands, which you can navigate to and edit with normal (command) mode. Once you've finished you can hit enter to run the edited or reselected command.

A similar history window is available for searches (keyboard shortcut q/, quit with ctrl+c,ctrl+c).

Reference: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Using_command-line_history

Related Solutions

Select lines using ranges in Vim

Like jw013 says, you can use the vim movements:

10GV12G
10GV2j

If you still want a range command:

command! -range Vis call setpos('.', [0,<line1>,0,0]) |
                    \ exe "normal V" |
                    \ call setpos('.', [0,<line2>,0,0])
:10,12Vis

For details:

:help command-range
:help setpos(

Shell – How to stop vim from editing directories

You can put the following lines in your vimrc to quit vim if any of its arguments are a directory:

for f in argv()
  if isdirectory(f)
    echomsg "vimrc: Cowardly refusing to edit directory " . f
    quit
  endif
endfor

Alternatively, if you only want to quit if all arguments are directories, you can try something like this:

let ndirs = 0
for f in argv()
  if isdirectory(f)
    let ndirs += 1
  endif
endfor
if ndirs > 0 && ndirs == argc()
  echomsg "vimrc: Cowardly refusing to edit directories"
  quit
endif

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Select lines using ranges in Vim

Shell – How to stop vim from editing directories

Related Question