Development » Vim Script Guide

• Introduction
• Syntax
  • Basic syntax
  • Comments
• Variables
  • Variable Scope
• Data Types
• Operators
• Loop
  • for loop
  • while loop
• Functions
  • return statement

Introduction

Vim script is the built-in language used in Vim/Neovim editors.

Syntax

Basic syntax

Comments

Variables

Variables are “containers” for storing information. In vim script, a variable starts with the scoop, followed by the name of this variable.

let g:foo = 'hello world'

Variable Scope

In vim script, there are 6 kinds of variable scopes:

1. g: global variable scope
2. s: local to script
3. l: local to function, it can be prepended.
4. w: local to window
5. t: local to tab
6. b: local to buffer

Data Types

Operators

Loop

Often when you write vim script, you want the same code block to run over and over again. Instead of adding several almost equal lines in the script, we can use loops.

In vim script there are two kinds of lools, for loop and while loop.

for loop

To execute a block of code a specified number of times, you need to use for loop. here is an example of for loop in vim script:

for n in range(10)
    echo n
endfor

while loop

While loops execute a block of code while the specified condition is true.

Functions

Vim provides many built-in functions, besides the built-in functions, we can also create our own functions.

function! TestHello() abort
    echo "hello world"
endfunction

use :call TestHello() to run a function.

return statement

Within a function, we can use return statement to return a variable. if the return statement is prepended. 0 is returned.

function! Test() abort
    return 'hello'
endfunction

echo Test()

" hello

function! Test() abort
    
endfunction

echo Test()

" 0