Quitting Vifm
Preserving runtime state across sessions
As described in Configuration model, Vifm can store some information between
invocations in vifminfo
file. What exactly is stored depends on the value of
'vifminfo'
option. The option enumerates values elements of run-time
state that can be saved on exit and restored on startup. It works this way:
- On exit Vifm stores all th is listed in
vifminfo
. - On startup Vifm loads reads
vifmrc
, which normally containsset vifminfo=...
and restores fromvifminfo
only items that correspond to that values.
By default only bookmarks are stored.
Below is the table of all possible values. Note those marked as obsolete, they might be removed
in future versions (for a good reason: they don't fit into usual way configuration fails are used; it's better
to put commands that correspond to this items into vifmrc
).
Value | Default | Description | |
---|---|---|---|
bookmarks | Yes | Bookmarks, except special ones like '< and '> .
| |
tui | No | State of the user interface (sorting, number of windows, quick view state, active view). | |
dhistory | No | Directory history. | |
state | No | File name and dot filters and terminal multiplexers integration state. | |
cs | No | Primary color scheme. | |
savedirs | No | Save last visited directory (requires dhistory ).
| |
chistory | No | Command line history. | |
shistory | No | Search history (/ and ? commands).
| |
phistory | No | Prompt history. | |
fhistory | No | Local filter history. | |
dirstack | No | Directory stack overwrites previous stack, unless stack of current session is empty. | |
registers | No | Registers content. | |
Obsolete | |||
options | No | All options that can be set with the :set command. | |
filetypes | No | Associated programs and viewers. | |
commands | No | User defined commands. |
TODO: merging of state.
Remembering last visited directories of panes
Without previous state (e.g. by default or on first start up) and with no arguments provided Vifm starts with both directories set to the current directory of a shell.
With previous state, when 'vifminfo'
contains both
dhistory
and savedirs
, Vifm reuses top-most items
of panes' directory history.
However, specifying directories on the command-line overwrites previous state.
Quitting Vifm started in file picker mode (e.g. from Vim plugin)
When -f
command-line argument is given to Vifm, it starts acting
like file picker. Most of commands work as usual, but instead of opening files
Vifm:
- Stores selected files (or current file when selection is empty) in place accessible by invoker (see below).
- Quits.
And quiting Vifm by user causes empty list of files to be written, so that output file always contains list of selected files (which is empty in case of abortion of file picking).
Selected files are stored in main configuration directory (~/.vifm/
by default) in file named vimfiles
. Each file name is stored on a
new line (which means that file names containing new line characters won't work
properly).
Usage example
Here is an example how this special mode can be used from a shell. Say, one wants to open file in in Vim, but it's easier to pick it with Vifm rather than writing path. It's also might be desirable to get process tree like
shell --> vim
instead of
shell --> vifm --> vim
i.e. use Vifm to pick a file and close it afterwards. It could as simple as the following one-liner in Bash:
vifm -f && [ -s ~/.vifm/vimfiles ] && xargs --arg-file ~/.vifm/vimfiles -d '\n' vim
# or
vifm -f && xargs --no-run-if-empty --arg-file ~/.vifm/vimfiles -d '\n' vim
Where [ -s "path" ]
checks that file specified by the
path
exists and has non-zero size.
xargs passes each line of the file as a
separate argument to Vim.