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                                               , -=-~  .-^- _

buffer-tree-explorer

A vim-plugin for exploring vim-buffers, rendered as an ascii-tree. An adaptation / extension of the buffer-tree vim plugin.

Why?

I recently wrote a vim-plugin (buffer-tree) that renders your vim-buffers as an ascii tree. While I liked the plugin, I found its lack of persistence made it difficult to use (it was only rendered in the echo area). This plugin will instead create a persistent buffer which displays your existing buffers and makes navigating easier.

Given a list of buffers,

:buffers
 22  h   "~/media/videos/video.html"    line 4
 26  h   "autoload/explorer.vim"        line 14
 27  h   "autoload/tree.vim"            line 1
 29  h   "autoload/buffer.vim"          line 15
 74  h   "~/personal/machine-learning/btc/data.csv" line 3141
 75 #h   "~/personal/advent-of-code/2020/day_1.py" line 1
 76 %a   "README.md"                    line 72

BufferTreeExplorer will create a buffer with an ascii-tree that can be used to view the existing buffers. Note that this tree cannot be used to open new files in new vim-buffers.

:Tree
└─ home/el
   ├─ .config/nvim/plugged/buffer-tree-explorer
   │  ├─ ◎ README.md ⇒ 76
   │  └─ autoload
   │     ├─ • buffer.vim ⇒ 29
   │     ├─ • tree.vim ⇒ 27
   │     └─ • explorer.vim ⇒ 26
   ├─ personal
   │  ├─ • machine-learning/btc/data.csv ⇒ 74
   │  └─ • advent-of-code/2020/day_1.py ⇒ 75
   └─ • media/videos/video.html ⇒ 22

Note that the numbers after the arrow next to each file represent the buffer numbers of each file.

Within this buffer you can use the k and j keys to scroll up and down respectively through the available buffers, as well as press <CR> to enter that buffer.

Installation

Add this line to your init.vim / .vimrc file (though you may need to modify it slightly if you use a different plugin manager.

Plug 'el-iot/buffer-tree-explorer'

and run

:PlugInstall

Usage

Use the :Tree command to render your buffers as an ascii-tree in a separate "tree buffer". While navigating within this buffer you can use the j and k keys to scroll up and down through the available buffers, Enter to open this buffer and delete to delete a given buffer a refresh your tree.

Configuration

Compressing the BufferTree

Sometimes your buffers will be very sparse and the buffer-tree will look a little large for so few files. As an example,

└─ home
   └─ el
      ├─ personal
      │  ├─ vim
      │  │  └─ buffer-tree
      │  │     ├─ README.md ⇒ 2
      │  │     └─ plugin
      │  │        └─ buffer-tree.vim ⇒ 3
      │  └─ repos
      │     └─ themerator
      │        └─ themerator.py ⇒ 14
      └─ .config
         └─ nvim
            ├─ plugged
            │  ├─ buffer-tree
            │  │  └─ plugin
            │  │     └─ buffer-tree.vim ⇒ 4
            │  └─ buffer-minimalism
            │     └─ plugin
            │        └─ buffer-minimalism.vim ⇒ 10
            └─ init.vim ⇒ 1

This is a little inconvenient, as a lot of vertical space is taken up by directories with no buffers. You can set g:buffer_tree_explorer_compress to 1 to "compress" your trees where possible. In this case, the tree above would look like

└─ home/el
   ├─ .config/nvim
   │  ├─ plugged
   │  │  ├─ buffer-minimalism/plugin/buffer-minimalism.vim ⇒ 10
   │  │  └─ buffer-tree/plugin/buffer-tree.vim ⇒ 4
   │  └─ init.vim ⇒ 1
   └─ personal
      ├─ repos/themerator/themerator.py ⇒ 14
      └─ vim/buffer-tree
         ├─ README.md ⇒ 2
         └─ plugin/buffer-tree.vim ⇒ 3

Closing the tree after selecting a buffer

By default, You can configure buffertree-explorer to close on selecting a buffer (with <enter>) by setting the g:buffertree_close_on_enter to 1.