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From time to time I accidentally create files with names like ":w" or ":q". This happens when instead of writing :wq I type :w:q and sometimes, for some reason, even :w:w or :w :w. And this has become too frequent to ignore.

My solution to this problem would be to make vim throw an error if :w is given a filename that starts with a colon. Are there ways to force vim to behave like that? Or maybe there is another obvious solution I am missing?

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2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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Disallow writing files matching :* pattern (no matter which command is used):

autocmd BufWritePre :* throw "Invalid name"
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    Such comments will probably be deleted, but just wanted to confirm that this works and is doing exactly what I wanted. On top of that files that contain : are allowed, and only the ones starting with : show the error. Perfect, thank you.
    – Karolis Koncevičius
    Feb 12 at 22:24
  • Why would it be deleted? :-) Thanks for the feedback and thanks to @Matt for the perfect solution :-)
    – Vivian De Smedt
    Feb 13 at 6:06
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    @VivianDeSmedt I think it's SO policy to delete simple "thank you" comments. BTW thanks for your answer as well - but I really wanted it to be an error, so then it would force me to notice it happened and maybe stop doing it.
    – Karolis Koncevičius
    Feb 13 at 13:00
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I would introduce an abbreviation:

cnoreabbrev <expr> :w (getcmdtype() == ':' && getcmdline() =~ '^w\s*') ? '' : ':w'

With this abbreviation if you type :w in the command line (getcmdtype() == ':') that match w\s* (getcmdline() =~ '^w\s*') it is abbreviated as '' and the not wanted extra :w are removed.

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