Is there a direct way to select the buffer displayed in a non-active window?

Question

I usually have two windows open, one in which I'm working and one in which I'm viewing some information (compiler messages, relevant library headers, etc. etc.). Now, it's easy to switch the buffer on which I'm working with :b, which offers nice tab-completion – however, that's not actually necessary very often since I usually spend substantial time working on a single file. What's needed more often is switching the buffer in the other window, however to do that I now use the pretty awkward ^w p :b foo ^w p combination.

Is it possible to choose that buffer without actually switching to the other window and then back again?

Answer 1

Maybe you could use something like this:

function! ChangeWindow(buf)
    execute "wincmd p"
    execute "e " . a:buf
    execute "wincmd p"
endfunction

command! -complete=buffer -nargs=1 CW call ChangeWindow("<args>")

You create a function ChangeWindow() which takes as argument a buffer name and execute the commands you usually do manually (ctrl+p, :e newBuf, ctrl+p)

You also create a command with -complete=buffer so it will provide the same autocompletion as :b and it will call the function with the argument to gave.

This way you only have to do :CW foo to put the buffer :foo in the previous window.

Answer 2

If you have a limited amount of buffers to cycle through instead of needing to open a specific buffer or file you could use :bnext or some variant of that. If you combine that with a :map-variant and some window switching you could get this:

nnoremap <F8> <C-W>w:bnext<CR><C-W>W
nnoremap <S-F8> <C-W>w:bprevious<CR><C-W>W

Here F8 and Shift-F8 will be mapped to cycled forward or backwards between the buffers in the next window.

Add that to your .vimrc and you are good to go. If you do not want to do that just add it as a regular command.