Occasionally, when I'm searching the help system for a particular topic, it will be shadowed by a different topic.
For example, if I do :h display I get help for something involving "GUI Resources", when I wanted help for the "display" setting (as in set display=lastline).
How can I find these "shadowed" topics, or list the most relevant matching topics?
Setting names are always surrounded by quotes, so use:
:help 'display'
to get the page you want.
You get some useful completions when pressing Ctrl+D, ie:
:help display<^D>
Will give you:
-display :display 'display' :syn-display strdisplaywidth()
As completions :-)
Bonus tip:
If you use :set wildmenu, this will also work with Tab, and you will have some additional completion features.
Help for Ex commands is always listed with the colon included:
:help :display
Help for settings is always listed with surrounding quotes, as Carpetsmoker already described:
:help 'display'
Specific help files are listed by their file name:
:help undo.txt (cf. :help undo)
Help for built-in functions is listed with trailing parentheses:
:help split() (cf. :help split)
Documentation for Vim's command arguments (i.e. those passed when invoking Vim from the shell) is listed with preceding hyphens:
:help -r (cf. :help r)
Help for subtopics within the documentation for various Vim features usually has an appropriate hyphenated prefix:
:help hl-Menu (cf. :help Menu)
:help syn-on (cf. :help on)
:help help-writing (cf. :help writing)
Similarly, help topics within plugins generally use the plugin's name as a prefix:
:help surround-mappings
Finally, something I didn't realise until I'd been using Vim for a while* is that the help includes topics for the default mappings in all modes.
For example, Ctrl-v does something very different in Normal mode to what it does in Insert mode.
To get to the different topics, use the i_, c_, and v_ prefixes for Insert, Command, and Visual mode mappings, respectively, or no prefix for the Normal mode mapping:
:help ctrl-v
:help i_ctrl-v
:help c_ctrl-v
:help v_ctrl-v
* ...despite the fact that it's virtually the first thing you'll read if you type a plain :help with no arguments! See "Get specific help" a few paragraphs down. (:help help-context)
:help help-context: Maybe that is worth mentioning in the answer as well.
– Sakari Cajanus
Jan 08 '16 at 10:57
help-context is actually almost the first thing on the front page of Vim's :help. I've added a footnote mentioning this to the answer.
– Rich
Jan 08 '16 at 12:01
@Carpetsmoker's answer definitely satisfies the "most relevant" criteria, because the completions will almost always contain what you're looking for. However, there's also the :helpgrep command, which works just like the :grep command but searches the text of all the help files.
You can browse through the results with :cnext or see all the results with :cwindow.
'wildmenu', you get one completion after another via Tab, or still the whole list with Ctrl-D. Suggest mentioning that. – derobert Feb 05 '15 at 18:20Tab:-) – Martin Tournoij Feb 05 '15 at 18:47:help 'display'is the same as:help display?. – wchargin Feb 21 '15 at 00:26