Posts tagged: vim

Today I discovered vim-speeddating by tpope. I’m sure I’ve seen years ago but it did not click for my workflow until today. I often go through pictures from my phone for the past few days and make Posts tagged: shots posts, but I want to date them to about when the image was taken most of the time. This allows me to quickly bump days up and down using c-a and c-x even around the new year.

Vim :noa is a command that runs what you call without autocommands on. This is typically used when you have some BufWritePre commands for formatting, most auto formatters are implemented this way in vim. It can be super useful if you have something like a yaml/json file that you have crafted perfectly how you want it, maybe it has some source code for a small script or sql embeded and your formatter wants to turn it into one line. You could get a better formatter, but for these one off cases that aren’t a big bother to me I run :noa w.

:noa w

When I want to put a date in a document like a blog post from vim I use !!date from insert mode. Note that entering !! from normal mode puts you in command mode with :.! filled out. This runs a shell command, i.e. date for this example.

It outputs the following

Fri Jan 31 08:46:11 PM CST 2025

You can also pass in a date such as tommorrow by pasdding in the -d date -d tomorrow.

It outputs the following

Sat Feb 1 08:53:20 PM CST 2025

codeium just taught me this one with autocomplete

:put =strftime('%Y-%m-%d')

This outputs the following

2025-01-31

What I like about the :put =strftime( method is that you can add a format, but that is a lot more for me to remember than !!date

A few weeks later #

I’m going through a bunch of blog posts and dont want my date formats to change to the Wed Feb format so I broke down and made these keybindings. I think I’m still going to be using .!date a lot, but these keybindings will be nice for editing blog post frontmatter.

set("n", "<leader>dd", "<cmd>put =strftime('%Y-%m-%d')<cr>", { noremap = true, silent = true })
set("n", "<leader>dt", "<cmd>put =strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')<cr>", { noremap = true, silent = true })

• dd 2025-02-12
• dt 2025-02-12 12:53:47
• :.!date Wed Feb 12 12:53:47 PM CST 2025

Vim has a handy feature to format text with gq. You can use it in visual mode, give it a motion, or if you give it gqq it will format the current line. I use this quite often while writing in markdown, I do not use softwraps in vim, so gqq quickly formats my current line into a paragraph. Once I have done this for a single line one time I typically switch to the motion for around paragraph gqap to format the whole paragraph and not just the current line.

before formatting #

after formattting #

So after months of fighting with gf not going to template files, I finally decided to put in some effort to make it work.

This was the dumbest keybind in my config, that I copied from someone else without understanding it.

What I am trying to do #

I have jinja templates in a directory called templates. I want to bind gf to open a template file, but it is trying to open a new file ./base.html

{% extends "base.html" %}
{% if request.state.user %}
    {% block title %}Fokais - {{ request.state.user.full_name }} {% endblock %}
{% else %}
    {% block title %}Fokais {% endblock %}
{% endif %}
{% block content %}
    {% if request.state.user %}
        <h1 id="title"
            class="inline-block mx-auto text-5xl font-black leading-loose
            text-transparent bg-clip-text bg-gradient-to-r from-red-600
            via-pink-500 to-yellow-400 ring-red-500 text-shadow-xl
            text-shadow-zinc-950 ring-5">
            {{ request.state.user.full_name }}
        </h1>
    {% endif %}
    {% include "me_partial.html" %}
{% endblock %}

What did not work #

I tried all sorts of changes to my path, but it still didn’t work.

vim.api.nvim_command("set path+=templates/**")

What I found #

after digging into my keymap I found that I had remaped gf to edit years ago. This works great if the file is in your current directory, and if it’s not it makes the file. This bind completely breaks vim’s ability to :find files and was a terrible keybind that I added probably from someone else years ago and have literally never used this feature. If gf opens an empty file I always close it and assume that vim failed to :find the file.

-- Allow gf to open non-existent files
set("", "gf", ":edit <cfile><CR>")

Yes, after that fix I still needed to adjust my path #

I ended up with the following in my options.lua.

-- look for jinja templates in the templates directory
vim.opt.path:append("templates/**")

With the latest release of version of nvim 0.8.0 we get access to a new winbar feature. One thing I have long wanted somewhere in my nvim is navigation for pairing partners or anyone watching can keep track of where I am. As the driver it’s easy to keep track of the file/function you are in. But when you make big jumps in a few keystrokes it can be quite disorienting to anyone watching, and having this feedback to look at is very helpful.

winbar #

nvim exposes the winbar api in lua, and you can send any text to the winbar as follows.

vim.o.winbar = "here"

You can try it for yourself right from the nvim command line.

:lua vim.o.winbar = "here"

Now you will notice one line above your file with the word here at the very beginning.

Clearing the winbar #

If you want to clear it out, you can just set it to an empty string or nil.

:lua vim.o.winbar = ""
:lua vim.o.winbar = nil

Setting up nvim-navic #

You will need to install nvim-navic if you want to use it. I added it to my plugins using Plug as follows.

call plug#begin('~/.local/share/nvim/plugged')
Plug 'SmiteshP/nvim-navic'
call plug#end()

Note! nvim-navic does require the use of the nvim lsp, so if you are not using it then maybe this won’t work for you.

I created an on_attach function long ago, cause that’s what Teej told me to do. Now I am glad I did, because it made this change super easy.

local function on_attach(client, bufnr)
    if client.server_capabilities.documentSymbolProvider then
        navic.attach(client, bufnr)
    end
end

Then you need to use that on_attach function on all of the lsp’s that you want navic to work on.

Then in a lua file you need to setup the winbar, for now I put this in my lsp-config settings file, but eventually I want to move my settings to lua and put it there.

vim.o.winbar = " %{%v:lua.vim.fn.expand('%F')%}  %{%v:lua.require'nvim-navic'.get_location()%}"

What my winbar looks like #

What I have right now is everything someone who is watching would need to know to navigate to the same place that I am in the project.

 waylonwalker/app.py   Link >  on_click

Diff #

Here are the changes that I made to to my plugins list and my lsp-config to get it.

 /home/u_walkews/.config/nvim/plugins.vim
call plug#begin('~/.local/share/nvim/plugged')
+Plug 'SmiteshP/nvim-navic'

#  /home/u_walkews/.config/nvim/lua/waylonwalker/lsp-config.lua
-local function on_attach() end
+local navic = require("nvim-navic")
+local function on_attach(client, bufnr)
+    if client.server_capabilities.documentSymbolProvider then
+        navic.attach(client, bufnr)
+    end
+end
+
+vim.o.winbar = " %{%v:lua.vim.fn.expand('%F')%}  %{%v:lua.require'nvim-navic'.get_location()%}"

GH commit #

If you want to see the change on GitHub, here is the diff

How to vimgrep over hidden files.

I needed to delete all build pipeline steps that were named upload docs. I currently have about 60 projects running from the same template all running very similar builds. In the past I’ve scripted out migrations for large changes like this, they involved writing a python script that would load the yaml file into a dictionary, find the corresponding steps make the change and write it back out.

Today’s job was much simplar, just delete the step, were all steps are surrounded by newlines. My first thought was to just open all files in vim and run dap. I just needed to get these files:positions into my quickfix. My issue is that all the builds reside within hidden directories by convention.

The issue #

variability

After searching through all the projects it was clear that all the steps were in their own paragraph, though I was not 100% confident enough to completely automate it, and the word upload docs was in the paragraph.

some were a two liner

- name: upload docs
  script: aws s3 ...

Some had a variation in the name

- name: upload docs to s3
  script: aws s3 ...

some were more than 2 lines.

- name: upload docs
  script: |
    aws s3 ...

some used a different command.

- name: upload docs
  script: |
    python ...

Templates are great #

but they change

Templates are amazing, and tools like cookiecutter and copier are essential in my workflow, but those templates change over time. Some things are a constant, and others like this one are an ever evolving beast until they are tamed into something the team is happy with.

vimgrep over hidden files #

I know all the files that I care to search for are called build.yml, and they are in a hidden directory.

:args `fd -H build.yml`
:vimgrep /upload docs/ ##

Once opened as a buffer by using args, and a handy fd command I can vimgrep over all the open buffers using ##

Open buffers are represented by ##

Now I can just dap and :cnext my way through the list of changes that I have, and know that I hit every one of them when I am at the end of my list. And can double check this in about 10s by scrolling back through the quickfix list.

Vim points achieved #

You’re not a true vim enthusiast until you have spent 10 minutes writing a blog post about how vim saved you 5 minutes. Check out all the other times this has happened to me in the vim tag.