1

I already know how to quit Vim, now I'm wondering is it possible anyhow to force Vim search '/somedir/file.js' in current directory when you press gf, as if it were './somedir/file.js'?

UPD: There's question how to set path in general, but it doesn't help to make /myfolder/ pointed to some certain folder I want. /myfolder/ is always absolute path to the root of current volume.

Community
  • 1
  • 1
Alex Dolgov
  • 13
  • 4
  • 2
    Maybe this helps http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2288756/how-to-set-working-current-directory-in-vim – Tamás Szabó Mar 06 '17 at 12:02
  • Just delete the first `/`? – Sato Katsura Mar 06 '17 at 13:19
  • There's another suggestion: to create symlinks in root :) But no, seriously, the question is how to make VIM to consider `/` not root of the volume but project's root (or some other certain folder). Deleting slash in the beginning breaks the project. – Alex Dolgov Mar 06 '17 at 13:26
  • Yeap, @TamásSzabó sent the link that contains your answer: add `set autochdir` to your vimrc. – Thiago Medeiros Mar 06 '17 at 14:22
  • 1
    @ThiagoMedeiros that's not exactly the case. His root in the path is not the file system root. He wants to set his root to a different root, the web project root. – sidyll Mar 06 '17 at 15:02

1 Answers1

2

Vim counts filenames beginning with / as file system root always, as you observed. If that wasn't the case, of if 'isf' (the option that controls what is considered file name) accepted a regex, this would be easier to solve. But if you remove / from 'isf' then no slashes are considered part of a file name anymore.

The only solution to this I can think of is using the visual mode for gf. As you may know, if you have text selected visually and use gf then the visual selection will be considered, instead of the 'isf' match. Then all we need to do is to visually select the file name under cursor excluding a possible leading /. This can be solved in a map, if you don't mind messing your previous search:

nnoremap <silent> gf :let @/ = substitute(expand('<cfile>'), '^/', '', '')
                   \  <bar>normal gngf<cr>

This overwrites your gf to set the search to the filename under cursor (expand()), minus leading slash if any (substitute()) and then run the normal commands gn which selects the match and finally the original gf.

If you want to save your previous search and restore, you can easily create a function to wrap this all. Note that I also wrote this is two lines just because I'm a declared enemy of long lines. But if you just want to test it remove the \ and write in a single line.

Now your gf will interpret /file as file. Thus if you're on the correcty directory this will work. If you need to search in a different directory, the option you're looking for is 'path', or 'pa' for short. You can give a list of directories to search. Much like Unix shell's $PATH. Separated by commas. From the help (be sure to read the rest yourself, with :h 'pa):

This is a list of directories which will be searched when using the gf, [f, ]f, ^Wf, :find, :sfind, :tabfind and other commands, provided that the file being searched for has a relative path (not starting with "/", "./" or "../"). The directories in the 'path' option may be relative or absolute.

In conclusion, to use this in your project, set your 'path' if needed as you wish and enable this map. Or run it all automatically in a :autocmd or something similar. You aren't changing the root of the project as you initially suggested, but you're kind of emulating this by including the desired directory in 'path' and then forcing gf to ignore the leading /.

sidyll
  • 57,726
  • 14
  • 108
  • 151
  • Happy that it worked @AlexDolgov ! Don't forget to accept the answer as correct if you think the problem is solved ;) – sidyll Mar 06 '17 at 21:55