How to prevent vim from creating (and leaving) temporary files?

hasen_j_35364 0
Viewed 123558

Why does vim create <filename>~ files? Is there a way to disable that?

If it's for backup (or something), I use git for that.

Also, these .<filename.with.path.hints>.swp files too.

How do I tell vim not to create those, or at the least to cleanup after itself?

EDIT

whoops, duplicate:

Why does Vim save files with a ~ extension?

I adopted rogeriopvl's answer from there.

verbatim copy:

set nobackup       "no backup files
set nowritebackup  "only in case you don't want a backup file while editing
set noswapfile     "no swap files
temporary-files text-editor vim
7 Answers

I'd strongly recommend to keep working with swap files (in case Vim crashes).

You can set the directory where the swap files are stored, so they don't clutter your normal directories:

set swapfile
set dir=~/tmp

See also

:help swap-file
user_554000

Put this in your .vimrc configuration file.

set nobackup
user_416650

I have this setup in my Ubuntu .vimrc. I don't see any swap files in my project files.

set undofile
set undolevels=1000         " How many undos
set undoreload=10000        " number of lines to save for undo

set backup                        " enable backups
set swapfile                      " enable swaps
set undodir=$HOME/.vim/tmp/undo     " undo files
set backupdir=$HOME/.vim/tmp/backup " backups
set directory=$HOME/.vim/tmp/swap   " swap files

" Make those folders automatically if they don't already exist.
if !isdirectory(expand(&undodir))
    call mkdir(expand(&undodir), "p")
endif
if !isdirectory(expand(&backupdir))
    call mkdir(expand(&backupdir), "p")
endif
if !isdirectory(expand(&directory))
    call mkdir(expand(&directory), "p")
endif
user_12310360
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