Question

When VIM refers to a file im editing as a “buffer”…what exactly does it mean? Whenever I edit the file in shell or in the application, it refers to the copy of the file as a buffer. I was curious as to what exactly this meant, but couldn’t find anything on it. Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

From :help windows-intro, as linked by icktoofay in a comment:

A buffer is the in-memory text of a file … [which is] loaded into memory for editing. The original file remains unchanged until you write the buffer to the file.

That is, a buffer represents the actual loaded/working data itself.