I see <Leader> quite often in other people's vimrc files.
Like this one.
What is it? What does it do?
asked Feb 16, 2015 at 4:01
2 Answers
Vim is full of various commands, which are assigned to almost all keys on the keyboard. But this causes a problem: Which commands can we use for our own commands, without interfering with existing ones? And at this moment, the <Leader> key comes into play. Think about <Leader>-key like a namespace for any user-defined commands. You can assign any command to a mapping with a leading <Leader> and you can be fully confident that your mapping won't break anything.
Default key for <Leader> is backslash.
answered Feb 16, 2015 at 13:13
To quote :help <Leader>:
To define a mapping which uses the "mapleader" variable, the special string "
<Leader>" can be used. It is replaced with the string value of "mapleader". If "mapleader" is not set or empty, a backslash is used instead. Example::map <Leader>A oanother line<Esc>Works like:
:map \A oanother line<Esc>But after:
:let mapleader = ","It works like:
:map ,A oanother line<Esc>
In other words, it lets the first key of mappings (specified in terms of <Leader>) be user defined.
-
8I believe that the rationale behind the
<Leader>is that it provides you with a "clean" way to provide custom shortcuts, without overriding existing Vim shortcuts. Commented Feb 16, 2015 at 13:00
<leader>, this one wants to know what<leader>means. So that that value can be interpreted. It is the difference between asking "In newton motion what is v?" and "Given an apple falled from a 10m high tree, what is v when it hits the ground?'<Leader>and<leader>, right?