Merge.
author |
Steve Losh <steve@stevelosh.com> |
date |
Wed, 04 Apr 2012 13:48:45 -0400 |
parents |
e66e6a4e104d |
children |
78f061a9fff8 |
Echoing Messages
================
The first piece of Vimscript we'll look at is `echom`.
You can read the full documentation for the command by running `:help echom` in
Vim. As you go through this book you should try to read the `:help` for every
new command you encounter to get a better understanding of how to use each one.
Run the following command:
:::vim
:echo "Hello, world!"
You should see `Hello, world!` appear at the bottom of the window.
Persistent Echoing
------------------
Now run the following command:
:::vim
:echom "Hello again, world!"
You should see `Hello again, world!` appear at the bottom of the window.
To see the difference between these two commands, run one more new command:
:::vim
:messages
You should see a list of messages. `Hello, world!` will *not* be in this list,
but `Hello again, world!` *will* be in it.
When you're writing more complicated Vim scripts later in this book you may find
yourself wanting to "print some output" to help you debug problems. Plain old
`:echo`will print output, but it will often disappear by the time your script is
done. Using `:echom` will save the output and let you run `:messages` to view
it later.
Comments
--------
Before we move on we should mention comments. When you write Vimscript code (in
your `~/.vimrc` file or another one) you can add comments with the `"`
character, like this:
:::vim
" Make space more useful
nnoremap <space> za
This doesn't *always* work (that's one of those ugly corners of Vimscript), but
in most cases it does, and we'll talk about when it won't (and why that
happens).
Exercises
---------
Read `:help echo`.
Read `:help echom`.
Read `:help messages`.
Add a line to your vimrc file that displays a friendly ASCII-art cat (`>^.^<`)
whenever you open Vim.