I would like to have vim fill a short sequence of characters into a longer string in insert mode. Example, say I write the word “sub” and it writes “subroutine” as soon as I press space. The problem I find is that when I use :imap sub subroutine, every time I start typing sub, the cursor does not continue moving, but hangs in the same position waiting for more keystrokes in order to decide what to do. I find this behavior annoying, although not wrong (it does what I need).
Is there a way to have vim continue typing single characters, and eventually replace ?
Just try to use abbreviate
:ab sub subroutine