Vim-script question

[Klaus Jantzen]

Hi,

I want to include in my .vimrc an autocommand that writes some new lines
into an empty file e.g. an zsh script.

So I wrote

au  BufNewFile *.zsh :a "#! /usr/bin/zsh"

but that does not do what I want (it does not do anything).

So my question: How can I write with the autocommand one or more lines
into an empty buffer?

Thanks for your help.

--

K.D.J.

[Tony Mechelynck]

:append is for several lines of text and (IIUC) needs an end-of-text
line. What you want here is :put

For instance:

:au BufNewFile *.zsh 0put ="#! /usr/bin/zsh"

See
:help :put
:help "=

Best regards,
Tony.

[Gary Johnson]

The :a command does not take an argument, it starts inserting lines
that are typed after :a is executed. The following should do what
you want.

au BufNewFile *.zsh a
au BufNewFile *.zsh #!/usr/bin/zsh

Another command you could use is :put, e.g.,

au BufNewFile *.zsh 0put ='#!/usr/bin/zsh'

Regards,
Gary

[aro...@vex.net]

> I want to include in my .vimrc an autocommand that writes some new lines
> into an empty file e.g. an zsh script.
>

A possible alternative is to use a "here" document containing whatever
boilerplate you want, in a shell script that then opens vim on the
resulting file.

[Charles Campbell]

Another alternative: in your $HOME/.vim/filetype.vim :

    au BufNewFile *.zsh  :0r $STUB/stub.zsh

You'll have to set up a STUB environment variable a path to a directory
you set up.
Then, put stub.zsh in there with whatever you'd like to start your zsh
file with.

Repeat for whatever other filetypes you want.

Regards,
Chip Campbell

[Klaus Jantzen]

Hi,

thank you very much for your very helpful information. Now I have a much
better understanding of vimscript.

The following shows what I finally wrote

===
function NewZshScript()
    let ts = " generated on " . strftime('%Y-%m-%d at %H:%M:%S')
    let inf = expand("%") . ts
    0put ='#! /usr/bin/zsh'
    put ='#'
    put ='# ' . inf
    put ='#'
    put ='pn=$1'
    put ='pn=${pn##*/}'
    put ='#'
endfunction
au BufNewFile *.zsh call NewZshScript()

===

First I tried 'append' but I never get that working with the line
continuations. Besides the function gives me more flexibility.

Here doc or stubs I will try when I have a bigger template.

Thank you.

--

K.D.J.