How can I quickly get to a set of commonly used files?

Question

I tend to edit particular text files much more often than others. There might be 30 or 40 or so different files I tend to edit most often. Plus there are others that kind of rotate in and out as things I am temporarily working on. Even though I might infrequently edit them, during periods of work involving that file I might frequently access the file many times over a short time period, say a week.

The problem is how to open these files quickly in Vim.

Currently I generally just type :e then manually type in the full path in the command line which is pretty tedious. Also, if I don't remember the path, then I end up either leaving Vim altogether and going to Caja to find the file, or using :Sex.

The only shortcuts I currently use is that I have about 10 aliases for going to particular directories. So, for example, if I am working on a project where several needed files will be in a commonly used directory, then I use the alias to change to there, then open Vim. After that, I don't need to type the full path. I just have to enter the file name. However, this method only works for directories where I have big projects going, which is only a few of them. Most of the files I edit are in one off places. Also, I don't want to try to remember 50 different aliases. I have a hard enough time just remembering the 10 I already have.

What I would really like would be a hotlist of my most commonly used files with a numeric or alphabetic key. So, I could, for example, press a hotkey and a multi-column list comes up of my favorite files. Then I would press, say, 'C' to open the file keyed as 'C' or whatever. That would allow me to open any of my favorite files in 2 keystrokes, which would be the ideal.

Answer 1

There are countless possibilities using plugins and VimScript'ing. But let's focus on "built-in stuff" only.

• cdpath instead of 10 aliases for going to directories

This is an option that works much like one in /bin/sh. That is, if you have set cdpath=/some/where,/else then instead of typing :cd /some/where/dirname you can type just :cd dirname.

• marks for remembering up to 26 files plus last file from previous Vim run

To open the last file being edited press '0. This should work out-of-the-box provided that :h viminfo file was loaded properly. The bookmarks "0"-"9" are auto written into it.

Press mA - mZ to set global marks. Press 'A to go to mark "A" as usual. The global marks keep both line/column number and file name. And they persist across Vim runs, as they are also stored into viminfo file automatically. Use :marks A-Z to see their values.

• oldfiles builtin MRU file list

This is also restored from viminfo. :oldfiles to browse through the list. :e#<42 to open file #42 from it. (BTW. Any command could be typed right from :h hit-enter-prompt, i.e. while still having that list before your eyes).

• find to search for file through the directory list

The option :h 'path' is often used as buffer-local to support gf command and such. But there's no rule against using it globally. Do :set path=/dir1/dir2 and then you may :find foobar.txt instead of usual and longer :edit /dir1/dir2/foobar.txt.

You can also force searching through the whole subtree by :set path=/dir1/**. Though it could result in a great deal of disk I/O.

BTW. Plain :edit also supports :h starstar, so this could even work :e /dir1/**/foobar.txt. Unless E77: Too many file names happens when there is more than one foobar.txt sitting under /dir1.

Answer 2

I personally use a combination of:

• Mru plugin https://github.com/yegappan/mru.

• Leaderf mru capabilities for fuzzy searching

• save bookmark for files. What you asked for, really. I open bookmarks and start linewise search with easymotion. https://github.com/ipod825/vim-bookmark

• a set of helper functions to track recent directories via fzf

• vim-ctrlspace (workspaces)