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Often times I use vim as a scratchpad - I just want to throw some text in there, maybe copy it to the clipboard, or munge it a bit, but it's not really important to keep it around.

Most of the time I do vim /tmp/foo.txt or whatever, but this gets a bit annoying. I combined this answer with some responses on a previous question of mine and came up with this solution:

vim +noswapfile +"set buftype=nofile" +"set bufhidden=hide"

Which actually works! But... it's a bit wordy.

Is there a shorter way to start vim with a scratch buffer (without using a plugin)?

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  • Have you considered making that an alias?
    – Herb
    Mar 23, 2020 at 19:17

3 Answers 3

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A sh/bash answer (even though the site is vi)

vtmp () {
  vim +noswapfile +"setlocal buftype=nofile" +"setlocal bufhidden=hide" "$@"
}

A vim answer:

Put this function in your vimrc or in a plugin/ file:

function Scratch()
  setlocal noswapfile
  setlocal buftype=nofile
  setlocal bufhidden=hide
endfunction

And then call vim as vim -c 'call Scratch()', or make a sh function similar to the above.

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  • Might be more convenient to use a command over a function: :command! S setlocal noswapfile buftype=nofile bufhidden=hide; you can then call it with vim +S, and converting an existing buffer is just :S (can of course also use a longer command name, but just :S works well enough for me). Also, your shell command can be a wee bit shorter by combining the settings in one :setlocal.
    – Martin Tournoij
    Mar 25, 2020 at 22:28
  • @MartinTournoij good points. I’ll add alternatives later.
    – D. Ben Knoble ♦
    Mar 25, 2020 at 23:41
1

Create a function, and then call said function from console when opening vim with the -c flag?

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There might be better approaches (e.g. alias to vim +noswapfile +"set buftype=nofile" +"set bufhidden=hide") but you can also use VimEnter autocommand to set up initial things, for example:

func! ScratchBuffer() abort
    if bufname() == ''
        setl buftype=nofile
        setl bufhidden=hide
        setl noswapfile
    endif
endfunc

augroup vim_start | au!
    au VimEnter * call ScratchBuffer()
augroup end

I am not sure if check for an empty buffer name is enough but a quick test I did turned out ok for me.

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