Man1 - nvim.1

is a text editor based on Vim. Start

followed by any number of options and/or files:

Commands in

begin with colon

Type “:help subject” to get help on a specific subject. Use <Tab> and CTRL-D to complete subjects (“:help cmdline-completion”).

The “quickref” help section is a condensed reference of editor features:

If you are new to Vim/Nvim, start with the 30-minute tutorial:

After installing/updating Nvim, it’s a good idea to run the self-check:

File(s) to edit. Opens one buffer per file. To switch between buffers, use the

and

commands.

Reads text from standard input until

then opens a buffer with that text. User input is read from standard error, which should be a terminal.

Finds

in the tags file, the associated file becomes the current file and the associated command is executed. Cursor is positioned at the tag location in the file.

QuickFix mode. Display the first error in

is omitted, the value of the ’errorfile’ option is used (defaults to

Further errors can be jumped to with the

command.

End of options. Remaining arguments are treated as literal file names, including filenames starting with hyphen

Ex mode, reading stdin as Ex commands.

Ex mode, reading stdin as text.

Silent (non-interactive) Ex mode, reading stdin as Ex commands. Useful for scripting because it does NOT start a UI, unlike

Silent (non-interactive) Ex mode, reading stdin as text. Useful for scripting because it does NOT start a UI, unlike

Diff mode. Show the difference between two to eight files, similar to

Read-only mode. Sets the ’readonly’ option. Implies

Buffers can still be edited, but cannot be written to disk if already associated with a file. To overwrite a file, add an exclamation mark to the relevant Ex command, such as

Resets the ’write’ option, to disable file modifications. Writing to a file is disabled, but buffers can still be modified.

Resets the ’write’ and ’modifiable’ options, to disable file and buffer modifications.

Binary mode.

Lisp mode. Sets the ’lisp’ and ’showmatch’ options.

Arabic mode. Sets the ’arabic’ option.

Hebrew mode. Sets the ’hkmap’ and ’rightleft’ options.

Verbose mode. Prints debug messages.

is the ’verbose’ level, defaults to

is specified, append messages to

instead of printing them.

Debug mode for VimL (Vim script). Started when executing the first command from a script. :help debug-mode

Disable the use of swap files. Sets the ’updatecount’ option to

Can be useful for editing files on a slow medium.

Recovery mode. If

is omitted then list swap files with recovery information. Otherwise the swap file

is used to recover a crashed session. The swap file has the same name as the file it’s associated with, but with

appended.

Alias for

Use

instead of the default

do not load any initialization files (except plugins). If

loading plugins is also skipped.

Use

instead of the default

do not read or write a ShaDa file.

Skip loading plugins. Implied by

Mimic a fresh install of Nvim. Skip loading non-builtin plugins and shada (viminfo) file.

Open

windows stacked horizontally. If

is omitted, open one window for each file. If

is less than the number of file arguments, allocate windows for the first

files and hide the rest.

but tile windows vertically.

but for tab pages.

For the first file, position the cursor on line

is omitted, position the cursor on the last line of the file.

and

on the command-line are equivalent to

inside

For the first file, position the cursor on the first occurrence of

is omitted, the most recent search pattern is used (if any).

and

on the command-line are equivalent to

and

inside

Execute

after reading the first file. Up to 10 instances allowed.

and

are equivalent.

but execute

before processing any vimrc. Up to 10 instances of these can be used independently from instances of

Source

after the first file argument has been read. Equivalent to

cannot start with a hyphen

is omitted then

is used, if found.

Read normal mode commands from

The same can be done with the command

If the end of the file is reached before

exits, further characters are read from the keyboard.

Append all typed characters to

Can be used for creating a script to be used with

but truncate

During startup, append timing messages to

Can be used to diagnose slow startup times.

Dump API metadata serialized to msgpack and exit.

Use standard input and standard output as a msgpack-rpc channel. :help –embed

Do not start a UI. When supplied with –embed this implies that the embedding application does not intend to (immediately) start a UI. Also useful for “scraping” messages in a pipe. :help –headless

Start RPC server on this pipe or TCP socket.

Print usage information and exit.

Print version information and exit.

Low-level log file, usually found at ~/.cache/nvim/log. :help $NVIM_LOG_FILE

Used to locate user files, such as init.vim. System-dependent. :help $VIM

Used to locate runtime files (documentation, syntax highlighting, etc.).

Path to the user-local configuration directory, see

Defaults to

:help xdg

but used to store data not generally edited by the user, namely swap, backup, and ShaDa files. Defaults to

:help xdg

Ex commands to be executed at startup.

Used to initialize the ’shell’ option, which decides the default shell used by features like

User-local

configuration file.

User-local

configuration directory. See also

System-global

configuration file.

System-global

runtime directory.

Nvim was started by

Most of Vim was written by

Vim is based on Stevie, worked on by

and