Question

I’ve tried MiniBufExplorer, but I usually end up with several windows showing it or close it altogether. What I’d like is something like LustyJuggler with incremental search, the way I switch between buffers in Emacs. Surely there is a script like this?

Answer 1

I have been using Wincent Colaiuta’s Command-T vim plugin for a couple months now. Wincent wrote the parts of it that need to be fast in C, and I must say that it is! And, I think its file pattern matching logic is even better than Textmate’s Command-T. Check out the screencast.

The Command-T plug-in for VIM provides
an extremely fast, intuitive mechanism
for opening files with a minimal
number of keystrokes. It’s named
“Command-T” because it is inspired by
the “Go to File” window bound to
Command-T in TextMate.

Files are selected by typing
characters that appear in their paths,
and are ordered by an algorithm which
knows that characters that appear in
certain locations (for example,
immediately after a path separator)
should be given more weight.

Easier buffer switching contains many useful tips. I have adapted the following to my .vimrc, which does buffer-name auto-completion, maps the most useful buffer-switching commands to my <Leader> and left-side home row keys, and shows the current buffer number in the status line:

"" Tab triggers buffer-name auto-completion
set wildchar=<Tab> wildmenu wildmode=full

let mapleader = ","

map <Leader>t :CommandT<Return>
map <Leader>a :bprev<Return>
map <Leader>s :bnext<Return>
map <Leader>d :bd<Return>
map <Leader>f :b 

"" Show the buffer number in the status line.
set laststatus=2 statusline=%02n:%<%f\ %h%m%r%=%-14.(%l,%c%V%)\ %P

I also use MiniBufExplorer, which provides a compact listing of each listed buffer in its own horizontal split up top.