Python for-loop/while/if/open-file auto completion in Vim

Question

Perl and C/C++ have perl-support.vim and c.vim by Fritz Mehner http://www.vim.org/account/profile.php?user_id=169

that support a very convenient auto completion shortcut in visual mode (e.g \aw for While construct or \ai for if else construct).

Does anybody know if such a comprehensive scripts also exist for Python?

python.vim doesn't seem to suppor this kind of auto completion.

Answer 1

Autocompletion is automatic: it happens without you doing anything.

What you want is not "autocompletion" but it can be achieved with varying levels of usefulness in a multitude of ways: insert mode mappings, abbreviations or full blown snippet expansion plugins like snipmate (abandoned original, maintained fork) or ultisnips.

I recommend the later option. This is a snipmate snippet:

# For
snippet for
    for ${1:item} in ${2:items}:
        ${3:code...}

When you type for<Tab>, the snippet is expanded to:

for [item] in items:
    code...

item is highlighted, ready to be changed to whatever you want and further <Tab>s jump you to items and code...:

for foo in [items]:
    code...

for foo in bar:
    [code...]

for foo in bar:
    print foo

This is by far the most flexible option.