Closing the "list of files in a directory" when having Vim to open the directory

Question

In the following screenshot, I demonstrate the following operations that shall yield a "buffer" that cannot be closed. My guess is that the list of files/directories is actually not a buffer. My question is: how to close such a thing? When I use :bnext, such a "buffer" always get in my way.

1. Open a "directory" by vim ~ (this opened my home directory); ==> I then get the first "buffer" opened, displaying the list of files + directories in my ~ directory;
2. In the newly opened Vim session, edit (open) .Xauthority file by :e .Xauthority; ==> This brings up another buffer
3. Then, I close the new buffer with :bd.
4. Lastly, I tried twice to close the first buffer of all files+directories with :bd. ==> nothings gets closed.

I have been experiencing the problem all Vim installations that I have: on Windows machine as gvim.exe, on Linux machine through the commandline (this recording) and on Linux with gvim GUI sessions.

Answer 1

That “buffer” is netrw. It notoriously has this issue, although in practice it’s not a huge deal.

I tend to swap files by name or argument list (:args) more often than cycling through buffers.

In other words, don’t worry about deleting it, and don’t let it bother your workflow.