On Tue, Jul 2, 2019 at 6:07 PM Paul <
vim9...@rainslide.net> wrote:
>
[...]
>
> I then noticed that the help says that showcmd is enabled by default in Vim (not sure when that change was made), but when I run `vim -Nu NONE`, `:verbose set showcmd?` shows "noshowcmd". `:scriptnames` confirms no files were loaded, and `:compatible` shows "nocompatible". Am I misunderstanding something there?
-N -u NONE means "load no vimrc or gvimrc, but start in 'nocompatible'
mode". However, since version 8, when you start Vim with no
command-line switches, then if it finds no vimrc it will source the
$VIMRUNTIME/defaults.vim script, which contains what used to be in
$VIMRUNTIME/vimrc_example.vim (the latter still exists for
compatibility, but nowadays it just sources the former). See ":help
incompatible-8" for details.
There is also a new -u argument value: "vim -u DEFAULTS" will source
the defaults.vim, disregarding any user vimrc, thus starting Vim in a
reproducible way in a modern user-friendly environment. With Vim 7 or
earlier, you could achieve an equivalent result by (e.g. for Vim 7.4
on Unix) "vim -u /usr/local/share/vim/vim74/vimrc_example.vim". (In
that case, -N is not necessary because the first non-comment line of
the erstwhile vimrc_example.vim used to be "set nocompatible".)
Best regards,
Tony.