Question

I’m new to mvim and I’m not sure how to use commands that have been saved in my vimrc file like the following:

"Load the current buffer in Chrome - Mac specific.
abbrev chrome :! open -a Google\ Chrome %:p<cr>

(note: This was originally:

"Load the current buffer in Chrome - Mac specific.
abbrev ff :! open -a FireFox.app %:p<cr>

)

I’m just confused as how this abbrev works all together and couldn’t find an answer on google :\ Maybe someone here could help?

Answer 1

These lines create an abbreviation for a commonly used command. In this case, it is creating an abbreviation for opening the current buffer in a particular application. For instance if you were working on a file called index.html and you entered the command :chrome in vim, it would open index.html in Chrome.

For the three major Mac browsers, use the following lines in your .vimrc file:

" Open the current buffer in a web browser
abbrev ff :!open -a Firefox.app %:p
abbrev chrome :!open -a Google\ Chrome.app %:p
abbrev sf :!open -a Safari.app %:p

This works because the :! at the beginning of each abbreviation definition tells vim to execute a shell command. In these cases, the shell command is open -a [WHICHEVER_BROSWER].app using the current buffer %:p.

Here is some further reading:

• Vim Wiki article on Abbreviations
• Blog Post about Opening Buffers in External Apps