Vim User Manual: Inserting Quickly - Completing Specific Items, Omni Completion and Repeating an Insert

matches. A special option for completion is 'infercase'. This is useful to find matches while ignoring case ('ignorecase' must be set) but still using the case of the word typed so far. Thus if you type "For" and Vim finds a match "fortunately", it will result in "Fortunately". COMPLETING SPECIFIC ITEMS If you know what you are looking for, you can use these commands to complete with a certain type of item: CTRL-X CTRL-F file names CTRL-X CTRL-L whole lines CTRL-X CTRL-D macro definitions (also in included files) CTRL-X CTRL-I current and included files CTRL-X CTRL-K words from a dictionary CTRL-X CTRL-R contents from registers CTRL-X CTRL-T words from a thesaurus CTRL-X CTRL-] tags CTRL-X CTRL-V Vim command line After each of them CTRL-N can be used to find the next match, CTRL-P to find the previous match. More information for each of these commands here: |ins-completion|. COMPLETING FILE NAMES Let's take CTRL-X CTRL-F as an example. This will find file names. It scans the current directory for files and displays each one that matches the word in front of the cursor. Suppose, for example, that you have the following files in the current directory: main.c sub_count.c sub_done.c sub_exit.c Now enter Insert mode and start typing: The exit code is in the file sub ~ At this point, you enter the command CTRL-X CTRL-F. Vim now completes the current word "sub" by looking at the files in the current directory. The first match is sub_count.c. This is not the one you want, so you match the next file by typing CTRL-N. This match is sub_done.c. Typing CTRL-N again takes you to sub_exit.c. The results: The exit code is in the file sub_exit.c ~ If the file name starts with / (Unix) or C:\ (MS-Windows) you can find all files in the file system. For example, type "/u" and CTRL-X CTRL-F. This will match "/usr" (this is on Unix): the file is found in /usr/ ~ If you now press CTRL-N you go back to "/u". Instead, to accept the "/usr/" and go one directory level deeper, use CTRL-X CTRL-F again: the file is found in /usr/X11R6/ ~ The results depend on what is found in your file system, of course. The matches are sorted alphabetically. COMPLETING IN SOURCE CODE Source code files are well structured. That makes it possible to do completion in an intelligent way. In Vim this is called Omni completion. In some other editors it's called intellisense, but that is a trademark. The key to Omni completion is CTRL-X CTRL-O. Obviously the O stands for Omni here, so that you can remember it easier. Let's use an example for editing C source: > { struct foo *p; p-> The cursor is after "p->". Now type CTRL-X CTRL-O. Vim will offer you a list of alternatives, which are the items that "struct foo" contains. That is quite different from using CTRL-P, which would complete any word, while only members of "struct foo" are valid here. For Omni completion to work you may need to do some setup. At least make sure filetype plugins are enabled. Your vimrc file should contain a line like this: > filetype plugin on Or: > filetype plugin indent on For C code you need to create a tags file and set the 'tags' option. That is explained |ft-c-omni|. For other filetypes you may need to do something similar, look below |compl-omni-filetypes|. It only works for specific filetypes. Check the value of the 'omnifunc' option to find out if it would work. ============================================================================== *24.4* Repeating an insert If you press CTRL-A, the editor inserts the text you typed the last time you were in Insert mode. Assume, for example, that you have a file that begins with the following: > "file.h" ~ /* Main program begins */ ~ You edit this file by inserting "#include " at the beginning of the first line: > #include "file.h" ~ /* Main program begins */ ~ You go down to the beginning of the next line using the commands "j^". You now start

This section covers completing specific items in Vim using commands like CTRL-X CTRL-F for filenames, CTRL-X CTRL-L for lines, etc., and using CTRL-N/CTRL-P to navigate matches. It details filename completion, including searching the file system. It then introduces Omni completion (CTRL-X CTRL-O) for structured source code, requiring filetype plugins and tag file setup. Finally, it explains how CTRL-A repeats the last inserted text.