string substitution in statusline (change %F)

Question

My current statusline (in .vimrc) contains %F to show the current filename.

I want to perform a string substitution in %F. More specifically I want to substitute ~/remotes/foo -> [foo]

Examples:

• ~/remotes/foo/myproject/file.py -> [foo]/myproject/file.py
• ~/remotes/bar/other_project/main.py -> [bar]/other_project/main.py

In plain Vim I'd do something like s/~\/remotes\/foo/[foo].

How to to that in statusline ?

I've tried some combinations like

:set statusline=%F
:set statusline=%{substitute(statusline, 'foo', 'bar', 'g')}

witout success.

Answer 1

With a little sprinkling of :help filename-modifiers, :help expand() gives you the equivalent of %F:

:set statusline=%{expand('%:p:~')}

From there, you can perform the desired substitution:

set statusline=%{expand('%:p:~')->substitute('\\~\/remotes\/foo','[foo]','')}

Note that the resulting filename will always have either of those three forms:

• /foo/bar/baz.txt if outside of ~,
• ~/foo/bar/baz if inside of ~,
• [foo]/bar/baz if inside of ~/remotes/foo.

It is OK given your explicit requirements but, if you want more fine-tuning, you will have to write your own function. See also :help fnamemodify().