command.md

excommand command

Vim Reference

:help :command
:help :delcommand
:help :comclear
:help :command-nargs
:help :command-complete
:help :command-range
:help :command-addr
:help :command-bang
:help <registers>
:help <args>
:help <q-args>
:help <f-args>

Short Description

List and create custom commands.

Examples

List all custom commands

:command
:verbose command

List custom commands starting with ...

:command Net
:verbose command Net

Create custom command

Let's create a custom command to open the OS file browser at the current working directory. Here some examples for Windows Explorer, macOS Finder and Linux anyfilebrowser/gnome/nautilus.

:command! E silent !explorer .
:command! F silent !open .
:command! O silent !xdg-open .
:command! O silent !gnome-open .
:command! O silent !nautilus .

Now you can run e.g. ...

:F<CR>

That's a fairly simple example, but there is much more to learn from the Vim help. Custom commands can have a certain number of args, support ranges and completion, ...

One more example with some more options. Let's assume you want to create a new project folder and also change directory into it right after creating it. Maybe you are annoyed by all the typing and you want a slightly faster way to do that. Put this in your .vimrc ...

command! -nargs=1 MKCD call mkdir(<f-args>, "p") | call chdir(<f-args>)

... and now you can run ...

:MKCD mynewproject

... and it will create the folder mynewproject and also perform the directory change.