Make views automatic

Tip 991 Printable Monobook Previous Next

created 2005 · complexity basic · author manalive · version 6.0

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You can use :mkview to save folds and such when you close a file - but you have to use :loadview next time you use the file.

With two lines in your vimrc, you can make that automatic.

I got all excited to post this, then found a tip that already mentioned it, back in 2001: VimTip122 "Skip blank lines when folding text." As he put it:

And as an added bonus, for those new to text folding, add this to your .vimrc file too:

autocmd BufWinLeave *.* mkview
autocmd BufWinEnter *.* silent loadview 

That way whatever folds you set won't get lost when you quit. I had that happen after spending 15 minutes folding up a 3000+ line file.

Plugin

For the lazy people, you may want to use restore_view.vim plugin. This plugin integrates many good parts in the comment below.

Comments

This was mentioned in the comments below, but the line:

set viewoptions-=options

should be strongly emphasized. If `options` is included in `viewoptions`, vim's current working directory at the time of `makeview` is stored and loaded with `loadview`. If you have vim automatically changing directories for each buffer, or if you locally set the pwd, your working directory will change when you reload the file during another session. Some may prefer this setting, but I found it quite confusing when vim jumped to a seemingly random working directory upon opening my vimrc, which was edited (and had a view made) while I was in another directory.

This really should be:

autocmd BufWinLeave * mkview
autocmd BufWinEnter * silent loadview

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autocmd BufWinLeave *.* mkview!
autocmd BufWinEnter *.* silent loadview

*.* is better for me than using just *, as when I load Vim it defaults to [No File], which of course triggers the BufWinEnter, and since there is no file name, an error occurs as it tries to execute.

The error does not appear when using *.*

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When I first wrote that I intended to only use folds in source code files, which almost always conform to the *.* pattern. Though it is true, as heptite points out that * would be more general purpose, it would work on files without the dotted notation, notably lots of shell scripts are like that. So use which ever is best for you.

BTW, since I made that tip several years ago, I have found that setting foldmethod to "marker" is more versatile. Though there are often reasons why not to use markers, it works better for me.

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For me, this following lines work quite well for all files

autocmd BufWinLeave * if expand("%") != "" | mkview | endif
autocmd BufWinEnter * if expand("%") != "" | loadview | endif

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Here's the version I have - it matches all files and excludes when opening vim without a file:

au BufWinLeave ?* mkview
au BufWinEnter ?* silent loadview

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BufWinLeave gives me grief when I'm closing a tab and the next tab is nameless. As noted in the manual, when BufWinLeave triggers % may be different from the buffer being unloaded. This works for me without fail so far:

au BufWritePost,BufLeave,WinLeave ?* mkview
au BufWinEnter ?* silent loadview

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I still get "E32: No file name" from "au BufWinEnter ?*" when I start vim fresh and do :copen. Triggering with "au BufReadPre" seems to work okay:

au BufWritePost,BufLeave,WinLeave ?* mkview
au BufReadPre ?* silent loadview

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this is the only solution that worked for me (Ubuntu 11.04, vim 7.3): (source: http://ebonhand.wordpress.com/2011/03/30/automatically-save-and-load-vim-views-folds who got it from here: http://dotfiles.org/~tsukkee/.vimrc)

set viewoptions-=options
augroup vimrc
    autocmd BufWritePost *
    \   if expand('%') != '' && &buftype !~ 'nofile'
    \|      mkview
    \|  endif
    autocmd BufRead *
    \   if expand('%') != '' && &buftype !~ 'nofile'
    \|      silent loadview
    \|  endif
augroup END

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I've been messing with this on and off.

You run into issues with it setting views for non-existent, generated files from plugins, and files in system temp directories which are likely to be gone or different when next loaded.

This is my current iteration - on unix/osx you'll want to replace the env variable calls for something appropriate.

Add any temp plugin files - a log from something that's only temporarily on disk, and not in the system temp dirs - to skipview_files.

let g:skipview_files = [
            \ '[EXAMPLE PLUGIN BUFFER]'
            \ ]
function! MakeViewCheck()
    if has('quickfix') && &buftype =~ 'nofile'
        " Buffer is marked as not a file
        return 0
    endif
    if empty(glob(expand('%:p')))
        " File does not exist on disk
        return 0
    endif
    if len($TEMP) && expand('%:p:h') == $TEMP
        " We're in a temp dir
        return 0
    endif
    if len($TMP) && expand('%:p:h') == $TMP
        " Also in temp dir
        return 0
    endif
    if index(g:skipview_files, expand('%')) >= 0
        " File is in skip list
        return 0
    endif
    return 1
endfunction
augroup vimrcAutoView
    autocmd!
    " Autosave & Load Views.
    autocmd BufWritePost,BufLeave,WinLeave ?* if MakeViewCheck() | mkview | endif
    autocmd BufWinEnter ?* if MakeViewCheck() | silent loadview | endif
augroup end

5 if statements one after the other is not compact, but neither is mashing them into one statement with a whole lot of boolean logic. Taverius 15:39, August 11, 2011 (UTC)