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Sometimes I browse around the directory of the current buffer by using :Ex. On one of my development machines, this results in a .swp file being created in every directory I visit.

I've checked the directory variable other machines where this doesn't seem to be the issue, and they match (directory=.,~/tmp,/var/tmp,/tmp).

I understand that .filename.swp files are useful for recovery and I would not like to disable swap files globally. The .filename.swp files are correctly cleaned up when buffers are closed.

I would be OK with this behavior for directories if the files were cleaned afterwords, but they linger... eventually I run find -name ".swp" -delete to clean them up.

:version
VIM - Vi IMproved 7.4 (2013 Aug 10, compiled Jan  2 2014 19:39:32)
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2 Answers 2

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This is probably a netrw bug. You might be able to work around by creating a file ~/.vim/after/ftplugin/netrw.vim (create non-existent directories) and put in there :set noswapfile

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  • Would this disable swapfiles for files being edited?
    – Pete
    Nov 18, 2016 at 14:42
  • no, only for netrw buffers.
    – Christian Brabandt
    Nov 19, 2016 at 16:23
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Netrw normally sets noswf, which is a buffer-local option, for its own buffers. However, if you have let g:netrw_use_noswf= 0 in your .vimrc, then netrw won't set noswf, which may cause your problem. What does :verbose set swf? show?

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  • I went with Christian Brabandt's solution, so it shows "noswapfile last set from ~/.vim/after/ftplugin/netrw.vim"
    – Pete
    Dec 29, 2016 at 22:43
  • if I remove the :set noswapfile, :verbose set swf? results in " swapfile".
    – Pete
    Dec 29, 2016 at 22:45

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