How to cut off user input and continue with script after a certain number of characters are entered?

Question

I'm struggling to write a function that asks the user to input a string, but cuts it off after they've inputted a specific amount of characters (three, for example) and moves on with the rest of the function logic.

An example use-case would be a grep function, where it asks for a pattern, but then automatically begins the grep after three characters and the remaining characters typed act as a filter.

See below for an example of the rough functionality I'm aiming for. After typing "1", "2", "3" the search is automatically executed:

I am familiar with getchar() as a way to "fake" it by monitoring raw keypresses and echoing them back, then after three keypresses executing the function. That solution seems imperfect for a number of reasons, the biggest one being that I would have to manually handle several non-ASCII keypresses (backspace, for example) that getchar() captures.

Thank you in advance for the help!

Answer 1

Patch 8.0.1445 introduced :h CmdlineChanged , you can use it together with :h input() to get what you want. Here is a simple example i wrote to update last line of current buffer to cmdline while typing in cmdline.

function! s:on_input_change()
  call setline('$', getcmdline())
  redraw
endfunction

function! s:dynamic_input()
  augroup input_test
    au!
    autocmd CmdlineChanged @ call s:on_input_change()
  augroup end

  let str = input("blah : ")

  au! input_test
endfunction

nnoremap \x :call <sid>dynamic_input()<cr>