Merge.
author |
Steve Losh <steve@stevelosh.com> |
date |
Sat, 31 Dec 2011 13:26:36 -0500 |
parents |
e66e6a4e104d |
children |
ea7cfb4681d9 |
Variable Scoping
================
So far Vimscript's variables may seem familiar if you come from a dynamic
language like Python or Ruby. For the most part variables act like you would
expect, but Vim adds a certain twist to variables: scoping.
Open two buffers in separate splits, then go into one of then and run the
following commands:
:::vim
:let b:hello = "world"
:echo hello
As expected, Vim displays "world". Now switch to the other buffer and run the
echo command again:
:::vim
:echo hello
This time Vim throws an error, saying it can't find the variable.
When we used `b:` in the variable name we told Vim that the variable `hello`
should be local to the current buffer.
Vim has many different scopes for variables, but we need to learn a little more
about Vimscript before we can take advantage of the rest. For now, just
remember that when you see a variable that start with a character and a colon
that it's describing a scoped variable.
Exercises
---------
Skim over the list of scopes in `:help internal-variables`. Don't worry if you
don't know what some of them mean, just take a look and keep them in the back of
your mind.