Question

Is there a way to move a file within Vim? E.g. I opened a file foo/bar.txt in Vim. I know 2 ways to move this file:

First solution:

1. Delete the buffer with :bd bar.txt
2. Perform the move on the shell with mv foo/bar.txt foo/bar2.txt
3. Load the file in vim with :e foo/bar2.txt

Second solution:

1. Close Vim, so all buffer where closed.
2. Perform the move on the shell…
3. Start Vim and load the file.

But these two solutions are embarrassing. I know, there is a plugin for renaming files vim-enuch, but isn’t there a Vim way for performing such basic functionality?

Answer 1

There is no atomic way to move a file like that, but this should be close:

function! MoveFile(newspec)
     let old = expand('%')
     " could be improved:
     if (old == a:newspec)
         return 0
     endif
     exe 'sav' fnameescape(a:newspec)
     call delete(old)
endfunction

command! -nargs=1 -complete=file -bar MoveFile call MoveFile('<args>')

Now you could say:

:MoveFile file2.txt

To rename to file2.txt

:MoveFile %.0

to move file2.txt to file2.txt.0