---

Extending Vim with Scripting

[ Thanks to Lee
Schlesinger
for this link. ]

“Vim is a great text editor – but Vimscript makes it even
better. Vimscript, Vim’s built-in scripting language, allows you to
extend Vim however you want. You can write your own commands and
functions to fit what you most often want to do, so that over time,
you can make Vim exactly the editor that you want it to be. The DIY
syntax highlighting I wrote about recently is a form of Vimscript,
but in this piece I’m going to look at scripting more
generally.

“Before you get started, there are a few basic rules to bear in
mind when writing Vim scripts. First, a function name must start
with an uppercase letter, and you should declare it with function!
to make sure it’s unique. The ! will redefine it if it’s already
defined (e.g. if you reload the script file). Secondly, there are a
bunch of different ways of scoping variables.”


Complete Story

Get the Free Newsletter!

Subscribe to Developer Insider for top news, trends, & analysis