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We have rather complex file structure and I would like simplify opening file independently where am I in the filesystem at the moment.

Let's say we have a project_folder and several files in it:

  /project_folder/common-prefix/foo.txt
  /project_folder/common-prefix/bar.txt
  /project_folder/common-prefix/nested/zoo.txt

Usually I change to project_folder/common-prefix and work from it. Some command and documentation usually expose full relative project path, e.g. common-prefix/bar.txt

In this case I have to manually remove common-prefix to modify interested file. How can I configure vim so that opening a file it's file name would be processed and known prefixes would be removed/replaced?

$ cd /project_folder/common-prefix/
$ vim foo.txt # this works naturally
$ vim common-prefix/foo.txt # here I want to cut `common-prefix`
$ vim ../common-prefix/foo.txt # probably I want to convert to absolute path, but this is a corner case

I read about includeexpr, but it seems it olny works for gf commands, whereas I want something like BufRead/BufNewFile

I found similar questions:

And also two plugins, which probably close to the implementation I want:

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3
  • It's unclear to me what you're trying to accomplish... What's wrong with opening /root_folder/foo.txt, that's a valid path after all... Is the issue the path attached to the buffer (when you use :ls to list buffers, or the path shown in the status line)? Does it help if you :cd to the directory where the file is inside Vim? Do you want to change the behavior for paths listed in the command-line arguments, or for using the :e and similar commands inside Vim, or both? Please be more specific about the actual issue you're having, with realistic examples if possible. Thanks!
    – filbranden ♦
    May 22, 2021 at 2:25
  • Btw, please edit the question to add more details. (Don't just answer in the comments.) Thanks!
    – filbranden ♦
    May 22, 2021 at 2:26
  • 1
    Yeah, sorry for messy explanation. I tried my best to make it clear. Most likely this is something trivial, but I work with vimscript very rarely, so it's hard to know where to start. Thank you.
    – grundic
    May 22, 2021 at 7:33

2 Answers 2

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1

Try to play with BufNewFile:

augroup test_prefix | au!
    au BufNewFile common_prefix/* :e <afile>:t
augroup END

In the example above, if you are in ..../common_prefix/ directory and do vim text.txt or vim common_prefix/test.txt you will end up editing test.txt in the current directory.

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3
  • Also worth checking if filereadable(<afile>) (possibly need expand()?), so you can edit an existing file normally.
    – D. Ben Knoble ♦
    May 24, 2021 at 17:54
  • This doesn't work for netsted files :| common-prefix/nested/zoo.txt
    – grundic
    May 24, 2021 at 19:35
  • 'Nested' is not in the question. Try adding **/* instead of *.
    – Maxim Kim
    May 25, 2021 at 5:12
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This is not an actual answer, more like an attempt. I saw something similar was done in vim-vp4 plugin:

func! s:openPrefixedFile(fname)
    echom "function is called with " . a:fname
    let l:oldBufname = bufname('%')
    let l:newFile = substitute(a:fname, "common-prefix/", "", "")
    echom "new filename is " . l:newFile
    echom "buf number is " . bufnr('%')

    execute 'bdelete! ' . l:oldBufname
    execute 'edit ' . l:newFile
    execute 'buffer ' . bufnr('%')
    execute 'doauto BufRead'
endfunc

augroup test_prefix | au!
    au BufNewFile common-prefix/* call s:openPrefixedFile(expand('%:p'))
augroup END

This work with single file, but doesn't support -O/-o options for splitting multiple files :(

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