Start NERDTree when gVim starts empty

Question

I'd like to have NERDTree shown everytime I start gvim empty, that is without passing any argument to it, starting simply to load files rather than to create a new one, such as just by issuing gvim (and not gvim myfile.txt).

Answer 1

The list of filename arguments can be obtained by calling argv(), so you could put something like this in your ~/.vimrc:

if empty(argv())
    NERDTree
endif

Note that putting a command in your ~/.vimrc, whose contents are executed before any plugins are normally loaded, requires that the source for that command be sourced first. Alternatively, you could put this in your ~/.vimrc:

if empty(argv())
    au VimEnter * NERDTree
endif

That will delay the execution of the NERDTree command until after all the plugins have been loaded.