vimbufferjump-list

How to prevent leaving the current buffer when traversing the jump list in Vim?


I frequently have several buffers open in my Vim session. This means that my jump list stores locations from several buffers. However, frequently when I use the Ctrl+O keyboard shortcut to jump to a previous location, I do not want to leave the buffer and want to jump to previous locations “local” to the current buffer. How do I do this?

For example, assume my jump list looks as follows:

4   10   1 ~/aaa.m
3   20   1 ~/aaa.m
2   12   2 ~/xxx.m
1   15   1 ~/aaa.m

I want to jump to line 15 of file aaa.m the first time I press Ctrl+O. Importantly, the next time I press Ctrl+O, I do not want to jump to file xxx.m. Rather, I want to jump to line 20 of file aaa.m, that is, my previous location within the “current” buffer. The default Vim behaviour, though, is to take me to to line 12 of file xxx.m.

Any ideas on how I can achieve this?


Solution

  • Try the following jump-list traversing function. It steps successively from one jump-list location to another (using Ctrl+O or Ctrl+I depending on the values that are supplied to its back and forw arguments), and stops if the current location is in the same buffer as that buffer it has started from. If it is not possible to find a jump-list location that belongs to the current buffer, the function returns to the position in the jump list that was the current one before the function was called.

    function! JumpWithinFile(back, forw)
        let [n, i] = [bufnr('%'), 1]
        let p = [n] + getpos('.')[1:]
        sil! exe 'norm!1' . a:forw
        while 1
            let p1 = [bufnr('%')] + getpos('.')[1:]
            if n == p1[0] | break | endif
            if p == p1
                sil! exe 'norm!' . (i-1) . a:back
                break
            endif
            let [p, i] = [p1, i+1]
            sil! exe 'norm!1' . a:forw
        endwhile
    endfunction
    

    To use this function as a Ctrl+O/Ctrl+I-replacement locked to the current buffer, create mappings as it is shown below.

    nnoremap <silent> <c-k> :call JumpWithinFile("\<c-i>", "\<c-o>")<cr>
    nnoremap <silent> <c-j> :call JumpWithinFile("\<c-o>", "\<c-i>")<cr>