How to use vim’s quickfix feature

jslintvim

I'm a pretty new Vim user and I've found that its learning curve is quite steep (at least for me). I just installed this vim script for JavaScriptLint error checking, which shows errors in vim's quickfix window once I save a buffer.

However, I don't know what to do next.. How do I 'scroll' through all the errors? How do I close the quickfix 'window'? How do I get it to check for errors after I've made changes to my code?

I've looked at the vim quickfix docs but the amount of commands are overwhelming and I can't seem to find what I want. Any help would be appreciated.

A side question: is there any way to have javascriptlint check for js errors for code residing in a .html file?

Best Answer

There are a lot of commands for quickfix as you have said, but I tend to find I only use a small subset of them:

:copen " Open the quickfix window
:ccl   " Close it
:cw    " Open it if there are "errors", close it otherwise (some people prefer this)
:cn    " Go to the next error in the window
:cp    " Go to the previous error in the window
:cnf   " Go to the first error in the next file
:.cc   " Go to error under cursor (if cursor is in quickfix window)

I tend to use this with :make and :vimgrep, so I can't comment on the Javascript lint checker, but this should give you something to get started.

Regarding the general use of JavascriptLint, I'm not a javascript programmer, but it looks like the script exposes a function called "JavascriptLint", so if you want to call it manually, you can use :call JavascriptLint(). However, it works on the disk copy of the file, so it'll have to be saved first. If (and only if) the command line jsl works on html files, you should be able to use :call JavascriptLint() on an html file to check the internal javascript. You could also do:

autocmd BufWritePost,FileWritePost *.html call JavascriptLint()

to automate it. If jsl doesn't support html files, then (short of patching the application or asking the author to change it), it's probably a lost cause...

Use `\r` instead of `\n`.

Substituting by \n inserts a null character into the text. To get a newline, use \r. When searching for a newline, you’d still use \n, however. This asymmetry is due to the fact that \n and \r do slightly different things:

\n matches an end of line (newline), whereas \r matches a carriage return. On the other hand, in substitutions \n inserts a null character whereas \r inserts a newline (more precisely, it’s treated as the input CR). Here’s a small, non-interactive example to illustrate this, using the Vim command line feature (in other words, you can copy and paste the following into a terminal to run it). xxd shows a hexdump of the resulting file.

echo bar > test
(echo 'Before:'; xxd test) > output.txt
vim test '+s/b/\n/' '+s/a/\r/' +wq
(echo 'After:'; xxd test) >> output.txt
more output.txt

Before:
0000000: 6261 720a                                bar.
After:
0000000: 000a 720a                                ..r.

In other words, \n has inserted the byte 0x00 into the text; \r has inserted the byte 0x0a.

Using Vim’s tabs like buffers

Stop, stop, stop.

This is not how Vim's tabs are designed to be used. In fact, they're misnamed. A better name would be "viewport" or "layout", because that's what a tab is—it's a different layout of windows of all of your existing buffers.

Trying to beat Vim into 1 tab == 1 buffer is an exercise in futility. Vim doesn't know or care and it will not respect it on all commands—in particular, anything that uses the quickfix buffer (:make, :grep, and :helpgrep are the ones that spring to mind) will happily ignore tabs and there's nothing you can do to stop that.

Instead:

:set hidden
If you don't have this set already, then do so. It makes vim work like every other multiple-file editor on the planet. You can have edited buffers that aren't visible in a window somewhere.
Use :bn, :bp, :b #, :b name, and ctrl-6 to switch between buffers. I like ctrl-6 myself (alone it switches to the previously used buffer, or #ctrl-6 switches to buffer number #).
Use :ls to list buffers, or a plugin like MiniBufExpl or BufExplorer.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

How to replace a character by a newline in Vim

Use \r instead of \n.

Using Vim’s tabs like buffers

Related Topic

Use `\r` instead of `\n`.