Question

Is it possible to change the way Vim names its swap/backup/undo files?

To avoid clutter, I’ve set options in my ~/.vimrc to dump these files in ~/.vim/tmp/{swap,backup,undo}; however, as I routinely edit files in different directories with the same name, I often end up with lots of otherwise indistinguishable files and Vim sometimes has trouble recovering.

Ideally, I’d like to use the naming scheme that the persistent undo has (%path%to%file.undo) for all these auxiliary files; there’s no obvious way to set it, but can it be done with Buf{Read,Write} macros?

Answer 1

I have this in my .vimrc and it names the swap files with full path names and percent signs just as you describe:

" Store swap files in fixed location, not current directory.
set dir=~/.vimswap//,/var/tmp//,/tmp//,.

The key is the // at the end of the directories. See this note from :help dir:

• For Unix and Win32, if a directory ends in two path separators "//"
  or "\\", the swap file name will be built from the complete path to
  the file with all path separators substituted to percent ‘%’ signs.
  This will ensure file name uniqueness in the preserve directory.