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, -=-~ .-^- _
A vim-plugin for exploring vim-buffers, rendered as an ascii-tree. An adaptation / extension of the buffer-tree vim plugin.
I recently wrote a vim-plugin (buffer-tree) that renders your vim-buffers as an ascii tree. While I liked the plugin, I found its lack of persistence made it difficult to use (it was only rendered in the echo area). This plugin will instead create a persistent buffer which displays your existing buffers and makes navigating easier.Given a list of buffers,
:buffers
22 h "~/media/videos/video.html" line 4
26 h "autoload/explorer.vim" line 14
27 h "autoload/tree.vim" line 1
29 h "autoload/buffer.vim" line 15
74 h "~/personal/machine-learning/btc/data.csv" line 3141
75 #h "~/personal/advent-of-code/2020/day_1.py" line 1
76 %a "README.md" line 72
BufferTreeExplorer
will create a buffer with an ascii-tree that can be used to view the existing buffers. Note that this tree cannot be used to open new files in new vim-buffers.
:Tree
└─ home/el
├─ .config/nvim/plugged/buffer-tree-explorer
│ ├─ ◎ README.md ⇒ 76
│ └─ autoload
│ ├─ • buffer.vim ⇒ 29
│ ├─ • tree.vim ⇒ 27
│ └─ • explorer.vim ⇒ 26
├─ personal
│ ├─ • machine-learning/btc/data.csv ⇒ 74
│ └─ • advent-of-code/2020/day_1.py ⇒ 75
└─ • media/videos/video.html ⇒ 22
Note that the numbers after the arrow next to each file represent the buffer numbers of each file.
Within this buffer you can use the k
and j
keys to scroll up and down respectively through the available buffers, as well as press <CR>
to enter that buffer.
Add this line to your init.vim
/ .vimrc
file (though you may need to modify it slightly if you use a different plugin manager.
Plug 'el-iot/buffer-tree-explorer'
and run
:PlugInstall
:Tree
command to render your buffers as an ascii-tree in a separate "tree buffer". While navigating within this buffer you can use the j
and k
keys to scroll up and down through the available buffers, Enter
to open this buffer and delete
to delete a given buffer a refresh your tree.
Sometimes your buffers will be very sparse and the buffer-tree will look a little large for so few files.
As an example,
└─ home
└─ el
├─ personal
│ ├─ vim
│ │ └─ buffer-tree
│ │ ├─ README.md ⇒ 2
│ │ └─ plugin
│ │ └─ buffer-tree.vim ⇒ 3
│ └─ repos
│ └─ themerator
│ └─ themerator.py ⇒ 14
└─ .config
└─ nvim
├─ plugged
│ ├─ buffer-tree
│ │ └─ plugin
│ │ └─ buffer-tree.vim ⇒ 4
│ └─ buffer-minimalism
│ └─ plugin
│ └─ buffer-minimalism.vim ⇒ 10
└─ init.vim ⇒ 1
This is a little inconvenient, as a lot of vertical space is taken up by directories with no buffers.
You can set g:buffer_tree_explorer_compress
to 1 to "compress" your trees where possible. In this case, the tree above would look like
└─ home/el
├─ .config/nvim
│ ├─ plugged
│ │ ├─ buffer-minimalism/plugin/buffer-minimalism.vim ⇒ 10
│ │ └─ buffer-tree/plugin/buffer-tree.vim ⇒ 4
│ └─ init.vim ⇒ 1
└─ personal
├─ repos/themerator/themerator.py ⇒ 14
└─ vim/buffer-tree
├─ README.md ⇒ 2
└─ plugin/buffer-tree.vim ⇒ 3
By default, You can configure buffertree-explorer to close on selecting a buffer (with <enter>
) by setting the g:buffertree_close_on_enter
to 1
.