How to make Vim open empty buffer with CWD set when opening a folder?

Question

At the moment when I run nvim path/to/folder/ it opens up the netrw window for it (more accurately, the Dirvish window for it), I'd like this to not be the case.

Ideal behaviour is that:

• when I do nvim path/to/file.js it opens the file, as normal, and
• when I do nvim path/to/folder/ it opens the normal empty buffer (the one with the copyright statement and so on) but with the CWD set to path/to/folder/.

This is basically to mimic a bit more the Atom behaviour, where as soon as I open the folder (usually with nvim .)

I can do fuzzy matching for the files right away, Dirvish has bound Ctrl-p (my fuzzy match key) to something else so I can't use it in that case.

Answer 1

Actually the problem was a misunderstanding of behaviour from my end.

In Atom, one does atom . to open the current folder. In vim/nvim/vimr one can simply call it without a path and the current folder will be opened as CWD by default.

So the solution is to simply call the command without any path.

Also, I apologize that the question is a bit badly worded and lacks accurate information.

Answer 2

I know this can be off topic but I'd work around the issue by redefining vim in a bash function. It checks whether the last argument is a file or a directory and acts correspondingly.

The bash version:

vim() {
    if [[ $# == 0 ]]; then
        # No arguments: just run vim
        /usr/bin/vim
    elif [[ -d ${!#} ]]; then
        # Last argument is directory: just cd there and open vim without a file name
        cd ${!#}
        /usr/bin/vim ${@:1:$#-1} # strip the last argument
        cd -
    else
        # Last argument is not a directory: act same as vim
        /usr/bin/vim $@
    fi
}

Still this doesnt work when multiple files are to be opened, like vim t.txt /usr/share ../README.

The zsh version

vim() {
    if [[ $# == 0 ]]; then
        # No arguments: just run vim
        /usr/bin/vim
    elif [[ -d ${@:$#:1} ]]; then
        # Last argument is directory: just cd there and open vim without a file name
        cd ${@:$#:1}
        /usr/bin/vim ${@:1:($# -1)} # strip the last argument
        cd -
    else
        # Last argument is regular file: just open that file
        /usr/bin/vim $@
    fi
}