Question

Is it possible to reset the alternate buffer in a vim session to what it was previously?

By alternate buffer, I mean the one that is referred to by #, i.e. the one that is displayed when you enter cntl-^.

Say I’ve got two files open main.c and other.c and :ls gives me:

  1 %a   'main.c'              lines 27   2 #    'other.c'             lines 56 

Say I open another file, e.g. refer.c, :ls will now give me:

  1 %a   'main.c'              lines 27   2      'other.c'             lines 56   3 #    'refer.c'             lines 125 

If I delete the buffer containing refer.c, :ls now shows:

  1 %a   'main.c'              lines 27   2      'other.c'             lines 56 

But if I do a cntl-^, refer.c will be displayed again!

Is there some way to get vim to reset the alternate buffer back to what it last was automatically? A ‘history’ of alternate buffers?

Or am I stuck with doing a :2 b to reload other.c into the alternate buffer?

Or maybe there is a good reason for this behaviour?

Answer 1

In this case, ‘alternate’ just means ‘previous’. So, yes, :b2 (or 2 ctrl-6) is probably the easiest way to change which two buffers will be toggled by ctrl-6.

Also, take a look at the :keepalt command.