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excommand autocmd

Vim Reference

:help autocommand
:help :autocmd
:help :augroup
:help autocommand-events
:help autocmd-list
:help autocmd-remove

Short Description

Create, list or remove autocommands that execute a command automatically on an event for a file matching a pattern.

Examples

As this is a bigger topic and I can't give an example for every user case, I thought it might be good to explain a bit more. In the short description you see 3 emphasized words (command, event, pattern). That's the core of autocommands. You can automatically let Vim execute a command like e.g. setting options, for specific files that match a pattern like e.g. *.txt, but only on certain events like e.g. reading a buffer. But it could be almost anything.

You could for example let Vim re-indent the code every time you save a C source file. Or you could let Vim run the external ctags program when you haven't pressed a key within 5 seconds. Or you could change the colorscheme automatically when open a file of a specific programming language.

So the commands and file pattern are pretty self-explanatory, but for the events I recommend that you read the Vim reference listed above, so that you get some ideas for what you could use the autocommands.

Creating an autocommand

First thing to know is that it's a good practice to put your autocommands in a autocommand group with a unique name and to remove all existing autocommands of that group in the beginning. Even in your .vimrc file.

Here are some random examples.

augroup VIMRC
    autocmd!
    autocmd BufEnter *.vba set filetype=vb
    autocmd BufEnter makefile set noexpandtab
    autocmd BufLeave makefile set expandtab
    autocmd FileType help nnoremap <buffer> q :helpclose<cr>
    autocmd CmdwinEnter * map <buffer> <S-CR> <C-c><C-e>
augroup END

In case of the FileType event the file pattern match matches against the filetype and not the filename.

When autocmd! is used inside an augroup then this group is used automatically. It's like autocmd! VIMRC in the example above.

create autocmd

Listing an autocommand

There are several ways to list the currently defined autocommands. You can list all autocommands, or all of an augroup, or all matching the pattern, or for a specific event, .... Here some examples.

:autocmd VIMRC
:autocmd BufEnter
:autocmd * makefile

list autocmd

Removing an autocommand

Removing works like listing autocommands, but with the exclamation mark.

:autocmd! VIMRC
:autocmd! BufEnter
:autocmd! * makefile