vim - preserve your cursor and window state

2012

Jun

In vim, you can re-indent a whole buffer by using gg=G in normal mode. I like this command so much I have it mapped to <leader>g</leader>.

This is great except that you loose your cursor (and window) position.

I found the post Preserve: A Vim function that keeps your state that describes a function called Preserve that saves the search history and cursor position. It doesn’t save the window position, so the screen still jumps around.

I have come up with a better Preserve:

" A wrapper function to restore the cursor position, window position,
" and last search after running a command.
function! Preserve(command)
  " Save the last search
  let last_search=@/
  " Save the current cursor position
  let save_cursor = getpos(".")
  " Save the window position
  normal H
  let save_window = getpos(".")
  call setpos('.', save_cursor)

  " Do the business:
  execute a:command

  " Restore the last_search
  let @/=last_search
  " Restore the window position
  call setpos('.', save_window)
  normal zt
  " Restore the cursor position
  call setpos('.', save_cursor)
endfunction

This is super useful, for example:

" Re-indents buffer.
nmap <silent> <Leader>g :call Preserve("normal gg=G")<CR>
" Removes all trailing whitespace in buffer.
nmap <silent> <Leader><space> :call Preserve("%s/\\s\\+$//e")<CR>

Ciao!

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