Question

Is it possible in vim to close a window and specify which one will fill the remaining space?

Say having a “six-pak” layout and closing the top left window X I would like to set that bottom window (B) would expand and fill the space occupied by the closed window and not the one to the right (A):

----------------------- //Closing top left window X
|       |       |     |
|    X  |   A   |     |
|       |       |     |
-----------------------
|       |       |     |
|   B   |       |     |
|       |       |     |
-----------------------

----------------------- //The desired result B is expanded upwards
|       |       |     |
|       |   A   |     |
|       |       |     |
|   B   |--------------
|       |       |     |
|       |       |     |
|       |       |     |
-----------------------

----------------------- //Actual result
|          |          |
|     A    |          |
|          |          |
-----------------------
|       |       |     |
|   B   |       |     |
|       |       |     |
-----------------------

---

EDIT

I am looking for a generic solution not necessarily closing the top left window. I would like to specify any adjacent window to fill the current window position. This could be closing the middle bottom one and specifying the right bottom one to expand.

Answer 1

Try these three steps:

1. Close the top left window.

   :q

2. Move to the lower left window.

   CTRL-W w CTRL-W w

3. Move the lower left window to the far left.

   CTRL-w H

You could then record these commands to a register to save keystrokes, e.g.,

let @q = ":q^M^Ww^Ww^Ww^WH"