Question

Whenever I work with multiple buffers, there is always one empty. I would like to not have that if I open a file with vim from the command line (i.e. I don’t want to create a new file, or choose to create a new file by naming it first and starting vim with that name). How can I do this?

Edit:

I’m launching gvim the following way:

I have an alias in my bashrc: alias g="gvim --remote-silent"

I open files from the command line with: g name-of-file

At this point (if I didn’t already have an instance of gvim open), I have two buffers:

Edit2:

Platform is Linux Mint, version is: VIM – Vi IMproved 7.3 (2010 Aug 15, compiled Mar 24 2011 07:07:39).

I updated my NERDTree plugin as David suggested, but it didn’t help. Other plugins I use: Pathogen, a, doxygentoolkit, nerdtree, snipmate, vim-rails,
ack_plugin, easymotion, protobuf, sparkup, yankring,
bufexplorer, matchit, rainbow, surround,
clang_complete, nerdcommenter, repeat

Answer 1

I don’t have your problem on

• linux, gvim – Vi IMproved 7.3 (2010 Aug 15, compiled Mar 24 2011 07:07:34) Included patches: 1-35
• windows gvim – Vi IMproved 7.2 (2008 Aug 9, compiled Aug 9 2008 18:46:22) MS-Windows 32-bit GUI version with OLE support

You are probably looking at a bug.

You might be able to debug things by cleaning your $MYVIMRC (temporarily) and running gvim --noplugin.

Alternatively inspect all settings (like bufhidden and other suspect parties)

 :set
 :setglobal

and see from which script/plugin they are being set (bufhidden as an example only here):

 :verbose set bufhidden
 :verbose setglobal bufhidden

You might also inspect autocommands (that might prevent buffers from being wiped)

 :verbose au