A built-in way to make Vim open a new buffer with file?

Question

Is there a built-in way to make Vim open a new buffer with file?

I want open a file. :enew doesn't take any arguments and opens a blank buffer. :edit closes my existing buffer.

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Related (about :enew):

• How do I open a new buffer without opening it in a split?
• How do you open a new buffer in the current window?

Answer 1

I think you might be misunderstanding what you're seeing happen. :edit does not close your current buffer. It just replaces it in the current window. If you type :buffers your previous buffer should still be listed. It is still open and in Vim's memory. The only way to make them go away is to run :bd or :bw (or :q of course).

So, to answer your question: :e newfile.txt

Your previous buffer is now the alternate file to the current buffer (:help alternate-file). You can switch back to it using ctrl-^ or ctrl-6.

There are commands similar to :edit

• :split - horizontal split
• :vsplit - vertical split

Both of these commands (shortened :sp and :vs respectively) take an optional file argument like :edit does. So, if you wanted to vertically split and create a new file in one command, you would type: :vs newfile.txt

Give :help edit-intro a read to get an idea of how Vim handles files, and :help windows-intro to read up on windows, buffers, and tabs.

Answer 2

I can accomplish the behavior using this, but it's kinda annoying to have to do a few extra keystrokes:

:enew         " shorthand: ene
:edit <file>  " shorthand: e

" Shorthand to do both
:ene|e <file>