Vim file navigation

I don't find drilling down into subdirectories via plain old :e to be that cumbersome given a decent configuration for tab-completion.

Look into the 'wildmenu' option to have Vim show a list of completions (filenames) in the modeline above the commandline. You can change the 'wildmode' option to further configure the kind of tab-completion Vim will do.

Personally I use :set wildmode=full.

My workflow is like this:

  1. :cd into the toplevel directory of my project.

  2. To open file foo/bar/baz:

    • Simplest scenario: type :e f<tab>b<tab>b<tab><enter>.

    • If there are more than one file starting with b in one of those directories you might have to do a <left> or <right> or another <tab> on the keyboard to jump between them (or type a few more letters to disambiguate).

    • Worst-case scenario there are files and directories that share a name and you need to drill down into the directory. In this case tab-complete the directory name and then type *<tab> to drill down.

  3. Open 2 or 3 windows and open files in all of them as needed.
  4. Once a file is open in a buffer, don't kill the buffer. Leave it open in the background when you open new files. Just :e a new file in the same window.
  5. Then, use :b <tab> to cycle through buffers that are already open in the background. If you type :b foo<tab> it will match only against currently-open files that match foo.

I also use these mappings to make it easier to open new windows and to jump between them because it's something I do so often.

" Window movements; I do this often enough to warrant using up M-arrows on this"
nnoremap <M-Right> <C-W><Right>
nnoremap <M-Left> <C-W><Left>
nnoremap <M-Up> <C-W><Up>
nnoremap <M-Down> <C-W><Down>

" Open window below instead of above"
nnoremap <C-W>N :let sb=&sb<BAR>set sb<BAR>new<BAR>let &sb=sb<CR>

" Vertical equivalent of C-w-n and C-w-N"
nnoremap <C-w>v :vnew<CR>
nnoremap <C-w>V :let spr=&spr<BAR>set nospr<BAR>vnew<BAR>let &spr=spr<CR>

" I open new windows to warrant using up C-M-arrows on this"
nmap <C-M-Up> <C-w>n
nmap <C-M-Down> <C-w>N
nmap <C-M-Right> <C-w>v
nmap <C-M-Left> <C-w>V

It takes me a matter of seconds to open Vim, set up some windows and open a few files in them. Personally I have never found any of the third-party file-browsing scripts to be very useful.


An easy way to browse the file system is the command: 

:Sex

I'm not making this up :)

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