Question

I am trying to get gVim working on a windows 7 machine and am having the following problems:

• Whenever I try to change the _vimrc file, I get a message saying that I don’t have permission to save in this location. This is on my home pc btw.

• I can’t seem to change the directory where the files I edit are being saved. They are all being saved to my desktop at the moment. I tried :set dir=path to where I want to save… with no success.

I wanted to run through vimtutor; however, whenever I type vimtutor into cmd, vim flashes open for a second then closes.

How do I alter the _vimrc file and how do I set the destination for edited files?

Answer 1

I can’t seem to change the directory where the files I edit are being saved. They are all being saved to my desktop at the moment. I tried :set dir=path to where I want to save… with no success.

dir is the location for swap files, which are special backing files used by Vim at runtime.

What you want is cd or lcd which changes the current directory. Type :help cd inside of Vim for more info.

How do I alter the _vimrc file and how do I set the destination for edited files?

I have _vimrc in my Vim folder ($VIM), so when I want to put Vim on a new Windows machine I just copy my entire folder.