Sometimes vim will leave something, i.e. press any key to continue, on the terminal and is there any way to return to a clear terminal after exiting vim? I am new to vim and please tell me exactly what I should do.
Sorry I did not express my idea clear enough the first time. What I actually want to ask is that is there a way to return to a clear terminal after typing :q in vim without further input of commands. I am using VIM 7.4 in Ubuntu, terminal type is xterm.
Add to your ~/.vimrc:
au VimLeave * :!clear
I use an alias to clear on any exit method including :q, :wqa. (this is for my osx brewed binary, find your own vim binary with which vim)
# .zshrc
alias vim="/usr/local/Cellar/vim/8.0.0094/bin/vim && clear"
clear doesn't actually clear the scrollback buffer unless the E3 capability is defined (and it isn't in bash on standard Ubuntu).
.bashrc: function vim { vim "$@" && clear; } This lets you pass arguments to vim but also clears the terminal screen after vim is quit in any way. I apologize if this doesn't apply to zsh or xterm!There is a way to do more stuffs by editing your .vimrc file
Add this to your .vimrc
command Qc :call ClearAndExit()
function ClearAndExit()
:!clear
:q!
endfunction
use :Qc to quit.... it will clear the screen as well
export TERM=xterm on your terminal and try the samething.vimrc changes as wellIf Vim is compiled with support for switching xterm-screens, it can do this by default, if you set the t_ti and t_te (Vim usually figures out, to what values this needs to be set by itsself). The gory details are explained at :h xterm-screens (pasted below)
(From comp.editors, by Juergen Weigert, in reply to a question)
:> Another question is that after exiting vim, the screen is left as it :> was, i.e. the contents of the file I was viewing (editing) was left on :> the screen. The output from my previous like "ls" were lost, :> ie. no longer in the scrolling buffer. I know that there is a way to :> restore the screen after exiting vim or other vi like editors, :> I just don't know how. Helps are appreciated. Thanks. : :I imagine someone else can answer this. I assume though that vim and vi do :the same thing as each other for a given xterm setup.
They not necessarily do the same thing, as this may be a termcap vs. terminfo problem. You should be aware that there are two databases for describing attributes of a particular type of terminal: termcap and terminfo. This can cause differences when the entries differ AND when of the programs in question one uses terminfo and the other uses termcap (also see +terminfo).
In your particular problem, you are looking for the control sequences ^[[?47h and ^[[?47l. These switch between xterms alternate and main screen buffer. As a quick workaround a command sequence like echo -n "^[[?47h"; vim ... ; echo -n "^[[?47l" may do what you want. (My notation ^[ means the ESC character, further down you'll see that the databases use \E instead).
On startup, vim echoes the value of the termcap variable ti (terminfo: smcup) to the terminal. When exiting, it echoes te (terminfo: rmcup). Thus these two variables are the correct place where the above mentioned control sequences should go.
Compare your xterm termcap entry (found in /etc/termcap) with your xterm terminfo entry (retrieved with "infocmp -C xterm"). Both should contain entries similar to: :te=\E[2J\E[?47l\E8:ti=\E7\E[?47h:
PS: If you find any difference, someone (your sysadmin?) should better check the complete termcap and terminfo database for consistency.
NOTE 1: If you recompile Vim with FEAT_XTERM_SAVE defined in feature.h, the builtin xterm will include the mentioned "te" and "ti" entries.
NOTE 2: If you want to disable the screen switching, and you don't want to change your termcap, you can add these lines to your .vimrc: :set t_ti= t_te=
Yes. You most certainly can.
Use the UNIX command to clear the screen.
clear
I didn't want to have to use a different command to exit Vim (e.g. :Qc as suggested) by manoj, and the EntangledLoops' .vimrc method didn't work for me.
Inspired by Plato's answer, I found a similar solution by putting the following function in .bashrc:
# Vim exits to clear terminal screen
function vim {
/usr/bin/env vim "$@" && clear
}
Using only vim inside the function was problematic due to the function calling itself recursively and creating an infinite loop, but adding /usr/bin/env eliminates this issue, ignoring the function and executing the first vim in the PATH.
