The VimL Primer: Edit Like a Pro with Vim Plugins and Scripts

by Benjamin Klein

VimL is the scripting language of the Vim editor. If you’ve ever edited or saved a vimrc file, you’ve written VimL. And VimL can do much more than simply configure settings and specify option values—you can write entire plugins in VimL. But without a background in scripting Vim, it can be hard to know where to start.

The VimL Primer gives you the tools and confidence you need. It gets you comfortable in VimL quickly, walking you through creating a working plugin that you can run yourself as you write it in Vim. You’ll learn how to script common commands and buffer interaction, work with windows and buffers from within a plugin script, and how to use autocommands to have Vim recognize entirely new filetypes. You’ll discover how to declare filetype-specific settings and define your own syntax elements for use with Vim’s syntax highlighting. And you’ll see how you can write your own command-line commands and define new mappings to call them.

With this introduction to scripting Vim, your own Vim extensions are only plugins away. Take control of your editor!

Genres: Programming, Coding

84 pages, Paperback

First published January 15, 2015

Reviews

[Борис Кучин · Rating 2 out of 5]

Микрокнижка (6 глав, в принципе, это могло быть 6 статей в блоге) с примером плагина для Vim. Читается легко (за вечер можно прочитать), даёт общее представление о разных аспектах (filetypes, autoload, syntax highlight, mapping-и) и без особых страшных подробностей. Для общего представления о VimL и о том, что плагины и vimscript это не так страшно, подойдёт. Но Learn Vimscript the Hard Way подходит к делу гораздо более основательно, так что если хочется более серьёзного погружения в тему, то лучше читать её.

[Michael Haupt · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author walks readers through creating a simple vim plugin that allows them to control an external music player. In doing so, he provides a broad introduction to the most relevant elements of the language.

So VimL is a funny little language, the language design as such is a bit cranky. That doesn't matter much because It's also insanely powerful and covers all the things: editing, files, windows, highlighting, reacting to events, interacting with the OS, ...

The book is a good starter for anyone interested in writing plugins for vim, which can apparently be used as a power tool, just like emacs.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not a ton in here, but an intuitive step by step guide to writing a basic vim plugin.