Vim file navigation

user_116042 0
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I'm trying really hard to learn vim after using TextMate for the last few years.

I've started to commit some of the in-file navigation to memory but I'm struggling with navigating between multiple files.

In my workflow it is pretty common that I'm flipping between a handful of files pretty regularly (enough files such that split-pane windows become too small).

I'm currently using NERDTree but find drilling down into directories cumbersome as well as constantly using CTRL+W h/CTRL+W l to hop back and forth.

I think I would do better with tabs I can easily toggle between but maybe I need to use a different workflow.

I'd also like a "Go to File..." shortcut like CMD+T in TextMate. I've found fuzzy_file_finder but it requires vim to be built with Ruby bindings which isn't the case the native installs I've worked on.

While I could rebuild the main reason I want to switch to vim is so I can have one editor environment that I know will easily work across any platform.

navigation vim editor
16 Answers

An easy way to browse the file system is the command: 

:Sex

I'm not making this up :)

Admin1

By far the best and fastest plugin I found for file navigation is fzf.vim. You can very quickly fuzzy search all your files, the open buffers and even the files contents.

Since we have a very large codebase at work I specified a couple of directories I use most as the directories fzf searches. Fzf even has a rich git integration. So you can search only tracked files.

This is how the file search looks: enter image description here

and his is how the content search looks:
enter image description here

user_11068990

If the file that you want is already loaded into a buffer (which is likely if you are flipping between a handful of files regularly) then you can quickly switch to the buffer with the :b[uffer] command.

:b can either take a buffer number as a parameter, or (more usefully) a string that matches part of the path/filename. If there are multiple matches you can use tab to cycle through them.

If you want to split the window and open the buffer in the new window then use :sb name

If you want to open the buffer in a new tab then use :tab b name

You can also use the :ls command to see a list of currently loaded buffers.

user_2064170
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