Vi and Vim Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for people using the vi and Vim families of text editors. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
The following does nothing:
:file /tmp/[some file]
or:
:file "/tmp/[some file]"
The following set's the file to /tmp/[some file]:
:file /tmp/\[some file]
What are the rules that :file arguments are escaped? How to pass for example a filename with newline?
What are the rules that :file arguments are escaped?
The argument to :file is undergoing expand() function. expand() expands wildcards and all special keywords. All special characters % # <, modifiers :p :h, sequences of <...> and characters triggering filename expansion * [ ** ? need to be escaped.
How to pass for example a filename with newline?
Use the function fnameescape() to escape the argument.
execute "file ".fnameescape("/tmp/[some file]")
The following does nothing:
It does nothing, because you have set wildignore+=/tmp/*. This causes the glob expression /tmp/[some file] to expand to nothing, becuase /tmp/ is ignored, so :file /tmp/[some file] becomes just :file.