I have decided to learn vim and want to give it a go for a month. I am about a week in, and it has been OK. I say "OK" because I do run into the usual frustrations that a n00b might run into.
Before vim, I used Visual Studio Code, and let's say I am in my project's directory: /home/jwan/code/bejebeje.admin
Whilst in that directory in the terminal I would run code . and that would open Visual Studio code with all my files in the left pane.
I read that NERDTree can give me that, so I've installed it and I have tried to configure it, but I must be doing something wrong, cause it isn't giving me that workflow that VS Code gave me.
According to the NERDTree docs, I need:
" Start NERDTree when Vim is started without file arguments.
autocmd StdinReadPre * let s:std_in=1
autocmd VimEnter * if argc() == 0 && !exists('s:std_in') | NERDTree | endif
That comment sounds like what I want! Unless it thinks the dot . in vim . counts as a file argument, in which case maybe that doesn't apply!? I'm not sure.
Anyways, I went ahead and tried it. In my ~/.config/nvim/init.vim I have:
fun! TrimWhitespace()
let l:save=winsaveview()
keeppatterns %s/\s\+$//e
call winrestview(l:save)
endfun
augroup custom_group
autocmd!
autocmd BufWritePre * :call TrimWhitespace()
autocmd StdinReadPre * let s:std_in=1
autocmd VimEnter * if argc() == 0 && !exists('s:std_in') | NERDTree | endif
augroup end
I believe it is OK to have it in the augroup since that rus automatically, at least that's the understanding I have.
So I saved that and exited vim and restarted it. But I don't get NERDTree with a pane to the right, I just get what I believe is vim's own file browser.
What am I doing wrong?
vim .opens.in the first buffer, which by default uses the netrw plugin to display a directory listing. Thereforeargc()will equal1, causing yourautocmd VimEnternot to fire. You can check this by doingvim .then:echo argc().vim: this may be the use you are striving for?