Paths

Vim is a text editor, and text editors (usually) work with text files. Text files live on filesystems, and to specify files we use paths. Vimscript has a few built-in utilities that can be extremely helpful when you need to work with paths.

Absolute Paths

Sometimes it's handy to be able to get the absolute path of a certain file for use with external scripts. Run the following commands:

:echom expand('%')
:echom expand('%:p')
:echom fnamemodify('foo.txt', ':p')

The first command displays the relative path of whatever file you're currently editing. % means "the current file". Vim supports a bunch of other strings you can use with expand() as well.

The second command displays the full, absolute path of that file. The :p in the string tells Vim that you want the absolute path. There are a ton of other modifiers you can use.

The third command displays an absolute path to the file foo.txt in the current directory, regardless of whether that file actually exists. fnamemodify() is a Vim function that's more flexible than expand() in that you can specify any file name, not just one of expand()'s special strings.

Listing Files

You might also want to get a listing of files in a specific directory. Run the following command:

:echo globpath('.', '*')

Vim will display all of the files and directories in the current directory. The globpath() function returns a string, with each name separated by a newline. To get a list you'll need to split() it yourself. Run this command:

:echo split(globpath('.', '*'), '\n')

This time Vim displays a Vimscript list containing each path. If you've got newlines in your filenames you're on your own, sorry.

globpath()'s wildcards work mostly as you would expect. Run the following command:

:echo split(globpath('.', '*.txt'), '\n')

Vim displays a list of all .txt files in the current directory.

You can recursively list files with **. Run this command:

:echo split(globpath('.', '**'), '\n')

Vim will list all files and directories under the current directory.

globpath() is extremely powerful. You'll learn more when you complete this chapter's exercises.

Exercises

Read :help expand().

Read :help fnamemodify().

Read :help filename-modifiers.

Read :help simplify().

Read :help resolve().

Read :help globpath().

Read :help wildcards.