closing :terminal / term_start() should quit vim if it's the last buffer

Question

Situation: I've typed this:

vim foo.js
:terminal

Now I have one split, a file editing buffer and a terminal.

The good: I can quit by closing the terminal first, then the file buffer.

The bad: But if I close the file buffer, and then the terminal, vim doesn't exit, but instead creates a new buffer editing the file, which I've just closed.

I find this distracting and confusing. I don't want it to open up foo.js again.

If that doesn't seem like a bug/misfeature, consider this use-case:

• I open up foo.js
• :terminal
• close foo.js
• open up foo.js in another instance of vim
• in the original vim instance, close the :terminal

In this case when the original vim instance tries to open foo.js (instead of quitting) I get a large error screen about "Another program may be editing the same file."

How do I make vim quit when I close the last buffer, even if it's a :terminal?

Answer 1

Thanks to @Matt I now know that if I close the terminal buffer myself instead of having the 'term_finish':'close' argument of term_start() do it, then it doesn't do the weird behavior of sometimes opening a different file.

So I've 'term_finish':'close' that with an exit_cb that closes the buffer.

Here's what I use in full:

function! JW_on_term_exit(a, b)
    normal q!
endfunction
nnoremap <silent> <Bslash> :below call term_start('env TERM=st-256color zsh', { 'exit_cb': 'JW_on_term_exit', 'term_name': 'zsh', 'norestore': 1 })<Return>

Answer 2

You can create a mapping which will close the terminal buffer directly. Then Vim will not open an additional empty buffer and will exit.

For simplicity I assume that the terminal is running shell, so Ctrl-D exits it normally.

tnoremap <silent><C-D> <C-D><C-\><C-N>ZQ