Prevent the cursor from moving to the top of the file

Question

I started using Seeing is Believing and updated my vimrc:

nmap <leader>s A # => <Esc>:%.!seeing_is_believing --timeout 12 --line-length 500 --number-of-captures 300 --alignment-strategy chunk --xmpfilter-style<CR>

However, after I run the command, my cursor moves to the top of the file.

Is there a way to keep my cursor in the original line & column that I ran the command?

Answer 1

In theory:

You could end your map with '' to jump back to the first non blank column on the line where you were:

nmap <leader>s A # => <Esc>:%.!seeing_is_believing --timeout 12 --line-length 500 --number-of-captures 300 --alignment-strategy chunk --xmpfilter-style<CR>''

Or you could use `` to jump back to the exact column on the line where you were:

nmap <leader>s A # => <Esc>:%.!seeing_is_believing --timeout 12 --line-length 500 --number-of-captures 300 --alignment-strategy chunk --xmpfilter-style<CR>``

Or you could just hit <CTRL-o> (:h CTRL-o) to go to older cursor position on the jump list.

Answer 2

Vim has a couple of functions to help with this, namely winsaveview() and winrestview(). Here's an example of how you might use them:

fun! Stayput(cmd)
    let v = winsaveview()
    exec a:cmd
    call winrestview(v)
endfun
nno <leader>s mmA # => <Esc>`m:silent call Stayput('%!seeing_is_believing ...')<CR>

So save your view, do some stuff, then restore your view, including cursor and scroll positions, to exactly how it was before. I've wrapped it up in a function for convenience.

A few other notes:

• consider using :nnoremap rather than :nmap;
• I've used a mark in the mapping to return the cursor to where it was before the comment was appended;
• I've used :silent to prevent editing messages appearing in the last line of the screen; and
• I'm not sure what the . in %.! is meant to be doing.

More info. at :help winsaveview().