Automatically create tmp or backup directories

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created November 22, 2006 · complexity intermediate · author Clayton · version 5.7

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I needed a way to automate creating the backup/tmp directories. It is especially annoying when I am in a new environment and I have to manually create the directories. I also prefer to use _vim rather then .vim on a Windows system so it checks for that.

function! InitBackupDir()
  if has('win32') || has('win32unix') "windows/cygwin
    let l:separator = '_'
  else
    let l:separator = '.'
  endif
  let l:parent = $HOME . '/' . l:separator . 'vim/'
  let l:backup = l:parent . 'backup/'
  let l:tmp = l:parent . 'tmp/'
  if exists('*mkdir')
    if !isdirectory(l:parent)
      call mkdir(l:parent)
    endif
    if !isdirectory(l:backup)
      call mkdir(l:backup)
    endif
    if !isdirectory(l:tmp)
      call mkdir(l:tmp)
    endif
  endif
  let l:missing_dir = 0
  if isdirectory(l:tmp)
    execute 'set backupdir=' . escape(l:backup, ' ') . '/,.'
  else
    let l:missing_dir = 1
  endif
  if isdirectory(l:backup)
    execute 'set directory=' . escape(l:tmp, ' ') . '/,.'
  else
    let l:missing_dir = 1
  endif
  if l:missing_dir
    echo 'Warning: Unable to create backup directories:' l:backup 'and' l:tmp
    echo 'Try: mkdir -p' l:backup
    echo 'and: mkdir -p' l:tmp
    set backupdir=.
    set directory=.
  endif
endfunction
call InitBackupDir()

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Comments

Of course using just one backup/swapfile directory will mean that the following command won't work any more:

vimdiff old/foe.txt new/foe.txt

especialy if you need to merge/change both ways.

That's why in script#1537 I use local directories. But the "set directory=" might be a worthy addition to my script.

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Actually, that command does work and it won't clobber the file, in :help 'directory'

For Unix and Win32, if a directory ends in two path separators, the swap file name will be built from the complete path to the file with all path separators substituted to percent '%' signs. This will ensure file name uniqueness in the preserve directory.

Example swap files in ~/.vim/tmp:

%home%user%tmp2%test1.txt.swp %home%user%tmp%test1.txt.swp

Maybe you can clarify if I am misunderstanding what you're saying. In a test I did, even without having the extra slash it will have two different swap files called test.txt.swp and test.txt.swo.

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