Is there any way to execute ex command without adding it to the command history?

Question

When I start vim, I always use -s SCRIPT_FILE_NAME option to execute additional commands. In SCRIPT_FILE_NAME, some ex commands are written. Let COMM denote the additional commands in the file. The problem is that COMM is added to command history. For example, when I

1. start vim and execute :echo and exit with :q
2. and start vim again

the expected contents of the command history (which can be seen via q:) are

: 48 echo
: 49 q

but the actual contents are

: 48 echo
: 49 q
: 50 COMM1
: 51 COMM2
      ︙
: 60 COMM11

and this is truly annoying. (Assume COMM consists of a hundread of commands.)

Is there any way to avoid this?

---

NOTE1: Because the execution order is different between commands in .vimrc and those in SCRIPT_FILE_NAME, I cannot move COMM to .vimrc. In other words, there is a reason why I use -s option in addition to .vimrc.

NOTE2: Of course, it is possible to execute sed command between the first and second step above to remove the undesired lines. However, doing like this isn't elegant, I think. I wonder if there is a better solution supplied by vim by default.

---

Update:

By putting all of COMM into a function in .vimrc and calling it from SCRIPT_FILE_NAME, the number of items added to the history can be decreased to one. But I'd still like to decrease it to zero if I can.

Answer 1

I always use -s SCRIPT_FILE_NAME option to execute additional commands. In SCRIPT_FILE_NAME, some ex commands are written.

So -s {scriptin} or the equivalent :source! command are meant to read the contents of a file and execute those as Normal mode commands.

They fully reuse normal mode key processing. As such, Ex commands entered with : will be added to history. There doesn't seem to be much you can really do about that.

If you're primarily using this mechanism to run Ex commands, then turn this around. Turn it into an Ex script instead (which means you can drop the :s), then you can use the :source command to load it.

If you have parts of the script that are using Normal mode commands, you can use the :normal! command to enter them, turning that into an Ex command that you can use as part of the script.

You mentioned "putting all of COMM into a function in .vimrc and calling it from SCRIPT_FILE_NAME", so it sounds like you were able to accomplish that already, since .vimrc and function are both comprised of Ex mode commands.

Once you have your Ex script, you can then use the -c command-line option to source it:

$ vim -c 'source SCRIPT_FILE_NAME.vim' ...

Or, if you have it as a function in your .vimrc:

$ vim -c 'call MyInitFunc()' ...

That should work as expected, without polluting the Vim command history.

---

Also, about this:

Because the execution order is different between commands in .vimrc and those in SCRIPT_FILE_NAME, I cannot move COMM to .vimrc. In other words, there is a reason why I use -s option in addition to .vimrc.

Take a look at the VimEnter event of autocmd, it triggers once, around the same time as the -c script works. (I believe -s is a little later than both, but still close.)

If you want to always use the sequence of commands and you have only been using the external script because of the timing, then using VimEnter should solve this problem in a better way.

Use something like the following in your .vimrc:

function! MyInitFunc()
  COMM1
  COMM2
  COMM3
endfunction
augroup vimrc_initfunc
  autocmd!
  autocmd VimEnter * call MyInitFunc()
augroup END

(See also v:vim_did_enter, if you care about possibly re-running MyInitFunc() if you're reloading your .vimrc using :source during runtime.)