63
votes
Accepted
How can I rename the file I'm editing?
You could save the file under a different name using :w newname. But this operation won't remove the old file and the 'old' file stays in your buffer, so any changes will be applied to your 'old' file....
- 3,226
48
votes
Accepted
What are the differences between :wq<cr> :x<cr> and ZZ when exiting vim?
From Vim's documentation, :x and ZZ are equivalent; they only save the file if it has been modified, then quit Vim:
Write current file, if modified, and quit (same as ":x").
(Note: If there are ...
- 5,766
46
votes
Accepted
How do I save a file in a directory that does not yet exist?
As far as I know there is no setting or some such to do this. But not all is lost, we can of course use the BufWritePre autocommand.
This is executed before the buffer is written to the disk. So we ...
- 55.2k
38
votes
Accepted
Is it possible to make Vim auto-save files?
There isn't a builtin option, although :help 'autosave' (in todo.txt) refers to a description of what such an option could do.
One possible way to implement this is to use the CursorHold autocommand ...
- 10.3k
24
votes
Accepted
How to save a file for which I have no write permissions?
The trick is to use an external call to sudo:
:w !sudo tee %
How this works:
:w !<command> executes <command> with the contents of the buffer as stdin.
tee duplicates stdin to a file &...
- 55.2k
23
votes
What are the differences between :wq<cr> :x<cr> and ZZ when exiting vim?
As akshay pointed out, Vim's documentation explains, that :x and ZZ are equivalent and only save a file if the associated buffer has been changed.
Whereas :wq saves the buffer to the corresponding ...
- 361
21
votes
Accepted
How to make vim automatically add a newline to the end of a file?
Basic info
Vim doesn't show latest newline in the buffer but actually vim always place EOL at the end of the file when you write it, because it standard for text files in Unix systems. You can find ...
- 1,918
21
votes
Don't add new line at the end of a file
In new versions of Vim there's finally an option for this
Vim 7.4.785 adds the 'fixeol' option that can be disabled to automatically preserve any missing EOL at the end of the file.
(see wiki page:...
- 311
20
votes
Accepted
How do you save the file that you're working on as a new file?
You can give a parameter to the :w or :write command to save to a different file.
For example to save the current buffer to /tmp/data.txt:
:w /tmp/data.txt
However, keep in mind that this does not ...
- 2,618
19
votes
Accepted
How do I edit crontab files with Vim (I get the error: 'temp file must be edited in place')
The problem is how Vim writes files. By default, it makes a copy of the file and overwrite the original one.
You can observe this with:
# Show the file's inode
$ ls -i a
3156153 a
# Open file in ...
- 55.2k
17
votes
How can I rename the file I'm editing?
You could drop to Netrw and rename the file there.
If the file you're editing is in the current directory, then do:
:edit .
Navigate to the file, press R, and change the name.
Press Enter to edit ...
- 2,618
16
votes
Accepted
How to map a shortcut for saving the file
First of all stop using :w to save. Use :update instead. :update writes the file to disk only when there are changes. So, it could be really helpful especially if the file is huge.
Now to map <C-S&...
- 949
15
votes
Accepted
Don't touch file upon write if the file was not changed
Extending @lcd047's answer you can use cabbrev to modify w
:cabbrev w <c-r>=(getcmdtype()==':' && getcmdpos()==1 ? 'up' : 'w')<CR>
When you type :w you will notice that it will ...
- 2,500
15
votes
Accepted
Why can't I write to a file in the home directory?
The tilde is only treated specially if it's used in commands like :w ~/event.log. When used in a string that is passed to a function -- even if this function treats the string argument as a file name -...
- 1,532
14
votes
Don't touch file upon write if the file was not changed
Not directly (that is, the behaviour of :w can't be changed), but you can learn to use :up instead of :w. It does exactly what you want.
- 3,568
14
votes
Accepted
Don't add new line at the end of a file
This isn't a full empty line, just a final newline at the end of the last line. Unix tools (like Vim's heritage) insist on adding that, whereas the Windows operating system is not so strict. You can ...
- 16.6k
13
votes
Accepted
Write selected area to file
First, copy (also called 'yank' in vim parlance) your visual selection to the register of your choice. For example, to copy to register 'z', make your visual selection, and then type "zy.
In the case ...
- 23.7k
13
votes
How to clang-format the current buffer on save?
You can add the following to your .vimrc
1. function FormatBuffer()
2. if &modified && !empty(findfile('.clang-format', expand('%:p:h') . ';'))
3. let cursor_pos = getpos('.')
4. ...
12
votes
Is it possible to make Vim auto-save files?
Vim does have an auto-save feature, but it saves it to the "recovery" file.
When you edit a document, e.g. MyFile.txt vim will create the revovery file .MyFile.txt.swp. If your system were to crash, ...
- 677
12
votes
How to save a file for which I have no write permissions?
I use the following mapping in my .vimrc, which I find useful:
cnoremap w!! w !sudo tee %
It's easy to remember, because w is "write," w! is "force write," and w!! is "super-duper-force write." :P
- 13.6k
12
votes
Accepted
Run bash command on writing a file with a particular extension?
You can use autocommands to run things automatically when certain events occur. In your case, you could do this:
autocmd BufWritePost *.less !less <afile>
This autocommand runs every time a ...
- 7,490
12
votes
Accepted
How to make sure no changes are made to a file
You can set the file to read only and not modifiable
:set readonly
:set nomodifiable
For more help see:
:h 'readonly'
:h 'modifiable'
- 14.8k
11
votes
Accepted
Why does the cursor move to the start of the line after <Esc>?
Looking at the documentation for autoindent has an answer as to why and how to work around it. :help 'autoindent':
Copy indent from current line when starting a new line (typing <CR>
...
- 7,992
11
votes
Accepted
Does Vim autosave?
Yes it saves to swap file.
You can do a quick test to get a feel of this. Go to a directory. Say vim notest.txt and write some text. You do not even have to save the file.
If you list files in the ...
- 1,207
11
votes
Accepted
How do I save a read-only file in Vim for Windows?
As on other vi/vim versions, you can use :w! to force the write, as long as you have permissions to override the read-only property.
For example, if you have set the file as read-only, the above will ...
- 226
11
votes
Accepted
How to write each line into separate file?
Try a global command:
:g/^/exe ".w! line".line('.').".txt"
:g/^/ Do a command for every line (you can adjust this regular expression if you only want to save certain lines, i.e. . for non-empty ...
- 7,406
10
votes
Is it possible to make Vim auto-save files?
I made a plugin vim-autosave which uses Vim 8 feature of Timers to periodically save your buffers.
- 22.9k
10
votes
How do I save a file in a directory that does not yet exist?
I can recommend a vim plugin from Tim Pope called vim-eunuch which defines many extremely useful commands when your work on UNIX/Linux with Vim (check out its features!).
Let's say you open vim with ...
- 1,979
10
votes
Why is vim save so slow?
The culprit in this particular situation was the Syntastic plugin.
It's forking eslint.
I load Syntastic on entering insert mode (using a vim-plug function loader).
Vim is plenty snappy on its own....
- 2,081
10
votes
Accepted
Vim Error for Git Commit Message
It is possible that you have EDITOR left unset or to its default value of vi. Try making vim your editor. Although both vi and vim are the same executable in mac, I guess, vim behaves in a minimalist ...
- 150
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible