Experimenting with vim/gvim in "virgin" mode

Question

Sometimes, I would like to try a trick I find in the internet. It is often helpful to try this in vim (gvim if it is a gui trick), in virgin mode, i.e., without loading all my ~/.vimrc stuff.

Do you have any tips for doing this efficiently?

Answer 1

From Vim FAQ 2.5:

vim -u NONE -U NONE -N -i NONE

This starts Vim in nocompatible mode (-N), without reading your viminfo file (-i NONE), without reading any configuration file (-u NONE for not reading .vimrc file and -U NONE for not reading a .gvimrc file) or even plugin.

After opening Vim/gVim you can use :source <path> to load a test vimrc or plugin.

You could also use -u NORC to skip only the vimrc but load the plugins (more details at :help -u).