Launching Vim with a file as argument does not work, if my .vimrc contains a `:cd` command

Question

UPDATE:

after playing around with my vimrc file I discovered this

this won't work

cd c:\myUsualFolder
set encoding=utf-8

but this will:

set encoding=utf-8
cd c:\myUsualFolder

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If I launch Vim from powershell/cmd from different folder than "myUsualFolder" with a file (e.g gvim myfile.txt) it will open a empty buffer located in "myUsualFolder" (or if the file exist ther the wrong one). I tracked it down to the first line of my .vimrc

cd c:\myUsualFolder

If this line is removed everything works fine.

Does anyone has an idea how to keep the change directory part while opening the right file as well?

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About my system: windows 10; vim version 8.0.586

Answer 1

If you want Vim to always start in a certain directory, then you should likely do that after it has finished handling normal startup. You can do that with the VimEnter autocommand.

Replace cd C:\myUsualFolder with

augroup vimrc
    autocmd!
    autocmd VimEnter * cd C:\myUsualFolder
augroup END

The augroup and autocmd! ensure you're not creating duplicate autocmds if you re-source your vimrc while you're running Vim.

:help autocmd-define gives more details on the behavior of autocmds.