Split windows and the project drawer go together like oil and vinegar. I don't mean to say that you can combine them to create a delicious salad dressing. I mean that they don't mix well!

• Drew Neil

You know what netrw is, right? The built in directory browser? Well, vinegar.vim enhances netrw, partially in an attempt to mitigate the need for more disruptive "project drawer" style plugins.

Some of the behaviors added by vinegar.vim would make excellent upstream additions. Many, the author would probably reject. Others are a bit too wild to even consider.

• Press - in any buffer to hop up to the directory listing and seek to the file you just came from. Keep bouncing to go up, up, up. Having rapid directory access available changes everything.
• All that annoying crap at the top is turned off, leaving you with nothing but a list of files. This is surprisingly disorienting, but ultimately very liberating. Press I to toggle until you adapt.
• The oddly C-biased default sort order is replaced with a sensible application of 'suffixes'.
• File hiding: files are not listed that match with one of the patterns in 'wildignore'.
  If you put let g:netrw_list_hide = '\(^\|\s\s\)\zs\.\S\+' in your vimrc, vinegar will initialize with dot files hidden. Press gh to toggle dot file hiding.
• Press . on a file to pre-populate it at the end of a : command line. This is great, for example, to quickly initiate a :grep of the file or directory under the cursor. Type .!chmod +x and get :!chmod +x path/to/file.
• Press y. to yank an absolute path for the file under the cursor.
• Press ~ to go home.
• Use Vim's built-in CTRL-^ (CTRL-6) for switching back to the previous buffer from the netrw buffer.

Install using your favourite package manager, or use Vim's built-in package support:

mkdir -p ~/.vim/pack/tpope/start
cd ~/.vim/pack/tpope/start
git clone https://github.com/tpope/vim-vinegar.git

Like vinegar.vim? Star the repository on GitHub and vote for it on vim.org.

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Copyright © Tim Pope. Distributed under the same terms as Vim itself. See :help license.