Open new file while keeping the focus on the the current buffer

Question

It is possible to open a new file with :edit or :tabnew but without jumping to that new buffer ?

Answer 1

Perhaps :badd {fname} is what you are looking for. It just adds a new buffer to the buffer list without switching to it.

See :help badd.

I don't think there is something similar for tabs.

Answer 2

I'm not aware of a command to do this. Not to worry though - you can define your own commands to do it!

For edit, you might want to use something like this to open the file then immediately switch to the previous buffer.

command -nargs=1 Bgedit edit <args> | bprevious

Which you can call with :Bgedit filename.

Explanation:

command - Create a new user-defined command

-nargs=1 - With one argument (the filename)

Bgedit - Name of the command (user-defined commands have to start with capital letters).

What comes next is what you will run when :Bgedit gets called:

edit <args> - open the file

| - Used in vim to chain two commands together, like a semicolon in bash

bprevious - switch to the previous buffer.

For tabnew, you can do the same thing, but using tabprevious

command -nargs=1 Tabbgedit tabnew <args> | tabprevious

You would put these two lines in your .vimrc.