On 2024-06-14, Enan Ajmain wrote:
> I use ':b' quite often. And I use a substring of the bufname to jump to
> that buffer. Works quite well.
>
> But a problem is that the substring I provide isn't only matched with
> the buffer names but also the filenames. See these examples:
>
> :ls
> 1 #h "example\predict.py" line 25
> 2 a "deeplog\deeplog.py" line 0
> 4 %a "example\train.py" line 37
> :b deep<tab>
>
> Then when I type ":b deep<tab>", the matches shown are:
>
> E:\projects\log-parsing\deeplog\example\predict.py
> deeplog\deeplog.py
> E:\projects\log-parsing\deeplog\example\train.py
>
> We can see that vim is matching the filepaths instead of only the buffer
> names. Can I change this behavior? Preferably with vimscripting, but
> I'm willing to change source code too since I use this too often.
>
> To be clear: I want only this match to be shown:
>
> deeplog\deeplog.py
The full buffer name _is_ the full file name. Vim usually tries to
show the user a shorter name such as the relative file name. If, in
your example, you were to :cd to some other directory and execute
:ls again, you would see those buffer names as full path names.
I don't know of a built-in command or option that will give you what
you want. I think you would have to write a function that would
search the buffer list for a buffer whose basename or relative path
contained the substring you supplied and execute the :b command with
that name. Just the bufname() function with the appropriate
file-pattern would do a lot of the work.
You could then create a command to call that function. The command
name would have to begin with an upper-case letter, but you can also
use :cabbrev to create an abbreviation that expands 'b' at the
beginning of the command line to your command name. That would let
you continue to use the :b command that your fingers are used to.
For <tab> to work, you'd also need to create a completion function
that followed the same matching rules as your buffer function.
Maybe not simple, but doable in vimscript.
HTH,
Gary