path: root/runtime/doc/version7.txt

*version7.txt*  For Vim version 7.0aa.  Last change: 2005 Mar 04


		  VIM REFERENCE MANUAL    by Bram Moolenaar


Welcome to Vim 7!  A large number of features has been added.  This file
mentions all the new items, changes to existing features and bug fixes
compared to Vim 6.x.  Use this command to see the version you are using: >
	:version

See |vi_diff.txt| for an overview of differences between Vi and Vim 7.0.
See |version4.txt| for differences between Vim 3.x and Vim 4.x.
See |version5.txt| for differences between Vim 4.x and Vim 5.x.
See |version6.txt| for differences between Vim 5.x and Vim 6.x.

INCOMPATIBLE CHANGES			|incompatible-7|

NEW FEATURES				|new-7|

Vim script enhancements			|new-vim-script|
KDE support				|new-KDE|
Translated manual pages			|new-manpage-trans|
Internal grep				|new-vimgrep|
POSIX compatibility			|new-posix|
Various new items			|new-items-7|

IMPROVEMENTS				|improvements-7|

COMPILE TIME CHANGES			|compile-changes-7|

BUG FIXES				|bug-fixes-7|

==============================================================================
INCOMPATIBLE CHANGES				*incompatible-7*

These changes are incompatible with previous releases.  Check this list if you
run into a problem when upgrading from Vim 6.x to 7.0.

A ":write file" command no longer resets the 'modified' flag of the buffer,
unless the '+' flag is in 'cpoptions' |cpo-+|.  This was illogical, since the
buffer is still modified compared to the original file.  And when undoing
all changes the file would actually be marked modified.  It does mean that
":quit" fails now.

":helpgrep" now uses a help window to display a match.

In an argument list double quotes could be used to include spaces in a file
name.  This caused a difference between ":edit" and ":next" for escaping
double quotes and it is incompatible with some versions of Vi.
	Command			Vim 6.x	file name	Vim 7.x file name ~
	:edit foo\"888          'foo"888'         	'foo"888'
	:next foo\"888          'foo888'          	'foo"888'
	:next a\"b c\"d         'ab cd'           	'a"b' and 'c"d'

In a |literal-string| a single quote can be doubled to get one.
":echo 'a''b'" would result in "a b", but now that two quotes stand for one it
results in "a'b".


Minor incompatibilities:

For filetype detection: For many types, instead of ~/.dir/filename use
*/.dir/filename, so that it also works for other user's files.

":0verbose" now sets 'verbose' to zero instead of one.

Removed the old and incomplete "VimBuddy" code.

Buffers without a name report "No Name" instead of "No File".  It was
confusing for buffers with a name and 'buftype' set to "nofile".

When ":file xxx" is used in a buffer without a name, the alternate file name
isn't set.  This avoids creating buffers without a name that are not useful.

The "2html.vim" script now converts closed folds to HTML.  This means the HTML
looks like its displayed, with the same folds open and closed.  Use "zR" if no
folds should appear in the HTML. (partly by Carl Osterwisch)
Diff mode now is also converted as it is displayed.

Win32: The effect of the <F10> key depended on 'winaltkeys'.  Now it depends
on whether <F10> has been mapped or not.  This allows mapping <F10> without
changing 'winaltkeys'.

When 'octal' is in 'nrformats' and using CTRL-A on "08" it became "018", which
is illogical.  Now it becomes "9".  The leading zero(s) is(are) removed to
avoid the number becoming octal after incrementing "009" to "010".

When 'encoding' is set to a Unicode encoding, the value for 'fileencodings'
now includes "default" before "latin1".  This means that for files with 8-bit
encodings the default is to use the encoding specified by the environment, if
possible.  Previously latin1 would always be used, which is wrong in a
non-latin1 environment, such as Russian.

Previously Vim would exit when there are two windows, both of them displaying
a help file, and using ":quit".  Now only the window is closed.

"-w {scriptout}" only works when {scriptout} doesn't start with a digit.
Otherwise it's used to set the 'window' option.

==============================================================================
NEW FEATURES						*new-7*

Vim script enhancements					*new-vim-script*
-----------------------

In Vim scripts the following types have been added:

	List		ordered list of items |List|
	Dictionary	associative array of items |Dictionary|
	Funcref		reference to a function |Funcref|

Many functions and commands have been added to support the new types.

The |string()| function can be used to get a string representation of a
variable.  Works for Numbers, Strings and composites of them.  Then |eval()|
can be used to turn the string back into the variable value.

The |:let| command can now use ":let var += expr" like using ":let var = var +
expr".  "-=" and ".=" works in a similar way.

With the |:profile| command you can find out where your function or script
wastes its time.


KDE support						*new-KDE*
-----------

Kvim is the KDE version of Vim.  It uses the Qt toolkit.  See |KVim|.
(Thomas Capricelli, Philippe Fremy, Mickael Marchand, Mark Westcott, et al.)


MzScheme interface					*new-MzScheme*
------------------

The MzScheme interpreter is supported. |MzScheme|
The |:mzscheme| command can be used to execute MzScheme commands.
The |:mzfile| command can be used to execute an MzScheme script file.


Printing multi-byte text				*new-print-multi-byte*
------------------

The |:hardcopy| command now supports printing multi-byte characters.
The 'printmbcharset' and 'printmbfont' options are used for this.
Also see |postscript-cjk-printing|.  (Mike Williams)


Translated manual pages					*new-manpage-trans*
-----------------------

The manual page of Vim and associated programs is now also available in
Italian (translated by Antonio Colombo).  More languages will follow.

The Unix Makefile installs the Italian manual pages in .../man/it/man1/.


Internal grep						*new-vimgrep*
-------------

The ":vimgrep" command can be used to search for a pattern in a list of files.
This is like the ":grep" command, but no external program is used.  Besides
better portability, handling of different file encodings and using multi-line
patterns, this also allows grepping in compressed and remote files.
|:vimgrep|.

If you want to use the search results in a script you can use the
|errorlist()| function.


POSIX compatibility					*new-posix*
-------------------

The POSIX test suite was used to verify POSIX compatibility.  A number of
problems have been fixed to make Vim more POSIX compatible.  Some of them
conflict with traditional Vi or expected behavior.  The $VIM_POSIX environment
variable can be set to get POSIX compatibility.  See |posix|.

Items that were fixed for both Vi and POSIX compatibilty:
- repeating "R" with a count only overwrites text once; added the 'X' flag to
  'cpoptions' |cpo-X|
- a vertical movement command that moves to a non-existing line fails; added
  the '-' flag to 'cpoptions' |cpo--|
- when preserving a file and doing ":q!" the file can be recovered; added the
  '&' flag to 'cpoptions' |cpo-&|
- The 'window' option is partly implemented.  It specifies how much CTRL-F and
  CTRL-B scroll when there is one window.  The "-w {number}" argument is now
  accepted.  "-w {scriptout}" only works when {scriptout} doesn't start with a
  digit.
- Allow "-c{command}" argument, no space between "-c" and {command}.
- When writing a file with ":w!" don't reset 'readonly' when 'Z' is present in
  'cpoptions'.
- Allow 'l' and '#' flags for ":list", ":print" and ":number".
- Added the '.' flag to 'cpoptions': ":cd" fails when the buffer is modified.
- In Ex mode with an empty buffer ":read file" doesn't keep an empty line
  above or below the new lines.
- Remove a backslash before a NL for the ":global" command.
- When ":append", ":insert" or ":change" is used with ":global", get the
  inserted lines from the command.  Can use backslash-NL to separate lines.
- Can use ":global /pat/ visual" to execute Normal mode commands at each
  matched line.  Use "Q" to continue and go to the next line.
- The |:open| command has been partially implemented.  It stops Ex mode, but
  redraws the whole screen, not just one line as open mode is supposed to do.
- Support using a pipe to read the output from and write input to an external
  command.  Added the 'shelltemp' option and has("filterpipe").
- In ex silent mode the ":set" command output is displayed.
- The ":@@" and ":**" give an error message when no register was used before.
- The search pattern "[]-`]" matches ']', '^', '_' and '`'.
- Autoindent for ":insert" is using the line below the insert.
- Autoindent for ":change" is using the first changed line.
- Editing Ex command lines is not done in cooked mode, because CTRL-D and
  CTRL-T cannot be handled then.
- In Ex mode, "1,3" prints three lines.
- Implemented the 'prompt' option.


Various new items					*new-items-7*
-----------------

Normal mode commands: ~

a", a' and a`		New text objects to select quoted strings. |a'|
i", i' and i'		(Taro Muraoka)

CTRL-W <Enter>		In the quickfix window: opens a new window to show the
			location of the error under the cursor.

Options: ~

'completefunc'		The name of a function used for user-specified Insert
			mode completion.  CTRL-X CTRL-U can be used in Insert
			mode to do any kind of completion.  (Taro Muraoka)
'quoteescape'		Characters used to escape quotes inside a string.
			Used for the a", a' and a` text objects. |a'|
'numberwidth'		Minimal width of the space used for the 'number'
			option. (Emmanuel Renieris)
'mzquantum'		Time in msec to schedule MzScheme threads.
'printmbcharset'	CJK character set to be used for :hardcopy
'printmbfont'		font names to be used for CJK output of :hardcopy
'fsync'			Whether fsync() is called after writing a file.
			(Ciaran McCreesh)
'wildoptions'		"tagfile" value enables listing the file name of
			matching tags for CTRL-D command line completion.
			(based on an idea from Yegappan Lakshmanan)
'formatlistpat'		pattern to recognize a numbered list for formatting.
			(idea by Hugo Haas)


Ex commands: ~

Win32: The ":winpos" command now also works in the console. (Vipin Aravind)

|:startreplace|		Start Replace mode. (Charles Campbell)

|:0file|		Removes the name of the buffer. (Charles Campbell)

|:diffoff|		Switch off diff mode in the current window or in all
			windows.

|:keepalt|		Do not change the alternate file.

|:delmarks|		Delete marks.

|:sandbox|		Command modifier: execute the argument in the sandbox.

|:exusage|		Help for Ex commands (Nvi command).

|:viusage|		Help for Vi commands (Nvi command).

|:cbuffer|		Read error lines from a buffer. (partly by Yegappan
			Lakshmanan)

New functions: ~

|add()|			append an item to a List
|append()|		append List of lines to the buffer
|browsedir()|		Dialog to select a directory.
|byteidx()| 		Index of a character. (Ilya Sher)
|call()|		call a function with List as arguments
|copy()|		make a shallow copy of a List or Dictionary
|count()|		count nr of times a value is in a List or Dictionary
|deepcopy()|		make a full copy of a List or Dictionary
|empty()|		check if List or Dictionary is empty
|errorlist()|		list of quickfix errors
|extend()|		append one List to another or add items from one
			Dictionary to another
|filter()|		remove selected items from a List or Dictionary
|finddir()|		Find a directory in 'path'.
|findfile()|		Find a file in 'path'. (Johannes Zellner)
|foldtextresult()|  	The text displayed for a closed fold at line "lnum".
|function()|		make a Funcref out of a function name
|get()|			get an item from a List or Dictionary
|getfontname()| 	Get actual font name being used.
|getfperm()|		Get file permission string. (Nikolai Weibull)
|getftype()|		Get type of file. (Nikolai Weibull)
|getline()|		With second argument: get List with buffer lines
|has_key()|		check whether a key appears in a Dictionary
|insert()|		insert an item somewhere in a List
|items()|		get List of Dictionary key-value pairs
|join()|		join List items into a String
|keys()|		get List of Dictionary keys
|len()|			number of items in a List or Dictionary
|map()|			change each List or Dictionary item
|matchlist()|		list with match and submatches of a pattern in a string
|max()|			maximum value in a List or Dictionary
|min()|			minimum value in a List or Dictionary
|mkdir()|		create a directory
|readfile()|		read a file into a list of lines
|remove()|		remove one or more items from a List or Dictionary
|repeat()| 		Repeat "expr" "count" times.  (Christophe Poucet)
|reverse()|		reverse the order of a List
|sort()|		sort a List
|split()|		split a String into a List
|string()|		String representation of a List or Dictionary
|system()|		Filters {input} through a shell command.
|tr()|			Translate characters. (Ron Aaron)
|values()|		get List of Dictionary values
|writefile()|		write a list of lines into a file

User defined functions can now be loaded automatically from the "autoload"
directory in 'runtimepath'.  See |autoload-functions|.


New autocommand events: ~

|InsertEnter|		starting Insert or Replace mode
|InsertChange|		going from Insert to Replace mode or back
|InsertLeave|		leaving Insert or Replace mode

|ColorScheme|		after loading a color scheme
|QuickFixCmdPre|	before :make, :grep et al. (Ciaran McCreesh)
|QuickFixCmdPost|	after :make, :grep et al. (Ciaran McCreesh)


New items in search patterns: ~
|/\%d| \%d123		search for character with decimal number
|/\]|  [\d123]		idem, in a colletion
|/\%o| \%o103		search for character with octal number
|/\]|  [\o1o3]		idem, in a colletion
|/\%x| \%x1a		search for character with 2 pos. hex number
|/\]|  [\x1a]		idem, in a colletion
|/\%u| \%u12ab		search for character with 4 pos. hex number
|/\]|  [\u12ab]		idem, in a colletion
|/\%U| \%U1234abcd	search for character with 8 pos. hex number
|/\]|  [\U1234abcd]	idem, in a colletion
			    (The above partly by Ciaran McCreesh)
|/[=|  [[=a=]]		an equivalence class (only for latin1 characters)
|/[.|  [[.a.]]		a collation element (only works with single char)

Nesting |/multi| items no longer is an error when an empty match is possible.

It is now possible to use \{0}, it matches the preceding atom zero times.  Not
useful, just for compatibility.


New Syntax/Indent/FTplugin files: ~

MuPAD source syntax, indent and ftplugin. (Dave Silvia)

ABAB/4 syntax file. (Marius van Wyk)

SQL-Informix syntax file. (Dean L Hill)

PHP compiler plugin. (Doug Kearns)

Sive syntax file. (Nikolai Weibull)


New Keymaps: ~

Sinhala (Sri Lanka) (Harshula Jayasuriya)


New message translations: ~

The Ukranian messages are now also available in cp1251.

Irish message translations. (Kevin Patrick Scannell)

Vietnamese message translations and menu. (Phan Vinh Thinh)


Others: ~

Mac: Add the selection type to the clipboard, so that Block, line and
character selections can be used between two Vims. (Eckehard Berns)
Also fixes the problem that setting 'clipboard' to "unnamed" breaks using
"yyp".

Mac: GUI font selector. (Peter "Rain Dog" Cucka)

Mac: support for multi-byte characters. (Da Woon Jung)

GUI font selector for Motif. (Marcin Dalecki)

Nicer toolbar buttons for Motif. (Marcin Dalecki)

Mnemonics for the Motif find/replace dialog. (Marcin Dalecki)

Mac: better integration with Xcode.  Post a fake mouse-up event after the odoc
event and the drag receive handler to work around a stall after Vim loads a
file.  Fixed an off-by-one line number error. (Da Woon Jung)

The netrw plugin now also supports viewing a directory, when "scp://" is used.
Deleting and renaming files is possible.  (Charles Campbell)

Added the t_SI and t_EI escape sequences for starting and ending Insert mode.
To be used to set the cursor shape to a bar or a block.  No default values,
they are not supported by termcap/terminfo.

Autocommands can be defined local to a buffer.  This means they will also work
when the buffer does not have a name or no specific name.  See
|autocmd-buflocal|.  (Yakov Lerner)

For xterm most combinations of modifiers with function keys are recognized.
|xterm-modifier-keys|

==============================================================================
IMPROVEMENTS						*improvements-7*

":helpgrep" accepts a language specifier after the pattern: "pat@it".

Move the help for printing to a separate help file.  It's quite a lot now.

":breakadd here" and ":breakdel here" can be used to set or delete a
breakpoint at the cursor.

The tutor was updated to make it simpler to use and added text to explain a
few more important commands.  Used ideas from Gabriel Zachmann.

Unix: When libcall() fails obtain an error message with dlerror() and display
it. (Johannes Zellner)

Added "nbsp" in 'listchars'. (David Blanchet)

Added the "acwrite" value for the 'buftype' option.  This is for a buffer that
doesn not have a name that refers to a file and is written with BufWriteCmd
autocommands.

For lisp indenting and matching parenthesis: (Sergey Khorev)
- square brackets are recognized properly
- #\(, #\), #\[ and #\] are recognized as character literals
- Lisp line comments (delimited by semicolon) are recognized

Added the "count" argument to match(), matchend() and matchstr(). (Ilya Sher)

winnr() takes an optional "$" and "#" arguments.  (Nikolai Weibull, Yegappan
Lakshmanan)

Added 'n' flag to search(): don't move the cursor. (Nikolai Weibull)

When uncompressing fails in the gzip plugin, give an error message but don't
delete the raw text.  Helps if the file has a .gz extension but is not
actually compressed. (Andrew Pimlott)

When C, C++ or IDL syntax is used, may additionally load doxygen syntax.
Also support setting the filetype to "cdoxygen" for C plus doxygen syntax.
(Michael Geddes)

The ":registers" command now displays multi-byte characters properly.

VMS: In the usage message mention that a slash can be used to make a flag
upper case.  Add color support to the builtin vt320 terminal codes.
(Zoltan Arpadffy)

For the '%' item in 'viminfo', allow a number to set a maximum for the number
of buffers.

The 'statusline' option can be local to the window, so that each window can
have a different value.  (partly by Yegappan Lakshmanan)

When a file looks like a shell script, check for an "exec" command that starts
the tcl interpreter. (suggested by Alexios Zavras)

Support conversion between utf-8 and latin9 (iso-8859-15) internally, so that
digraphs still work when iconv is not available.

When a session file is loaded while editing an unnamed, empty buffer that
buffer is wiped out.  Avoids that there is an unused buffer in the buffer
list.

Win32: When libintl.dll supports bind_textdomain_codeset(), use it.
(NAKADAIRA Yukihiro)

When foldtext() finds no text after removing the comment leader, use the
second line of the fold.  Helps for C-style /* */ comments where the first
line is just "/*".

When editing the same file from two systems (e.g., Unix and MS-Windows) there
mostly was no warning for an existing swap file, because the name of the
edited file differs (e.g., y:\dir\file vs /home/me/dir/file).  Added a flag to
the swap file to indicate it is in the same directory as the edited file.  The
used path then doesn't matter and the check for editing the same file is much
more reliable.

Client-server communication now supports 'encoding'.  When setting 'encoding'
in a Vim server to "utf-8", and using "vim --remote fname" in a console,
"fname" is converted from the console encoding to utf-8.  Also allows Vims
with different 'encoding' settings to exchange messages.

Internal: Changed ga_room into ga_maxlen, so that it doesn't need to be
incremented/decremented each time.

Included a few improvements for Motif from Marcin Dalecki.  Draw label
contents ourselves to make them handle fonts in a way configurable by Vim and
a bit less dependent on the X11 font management.

When a register is empty it is not stored in the viminfo file.

Removed the tcltags script, it's obsolete.

":redir @*>" and ":redir @+>" append to the clipboard.  Better check for
invalid characters after the register name. |:redir|

":redir => variable" and ":redir =>> variable" write or append to a variable.
(Yegappan Lakshmanan) |:redir|

":let g:" lists global variables.
":let b:" lists buffer-local variables.
":let w:" lists window-local variables.
":let v:" lists Vim variables.

The stridx() and strridx() functions take a third argument, where to start
searching.  (Yegappan Lakshmanan)

g CTRL-G also shows the number of characters if it differs from the number of
bytes.

Completion for ":debug" and entering an expression for the '=' register.  Skip
":" between range and command name. (Peter winters)

CTRL-Q in Insert mode now works like CTRL-V by default.  Previously it was
ignored.

When "beep" is included in 'debug' a function or script that causes a beep
will result in a message with the source of the error.

When completing buffer names, match with "\(^\|[\/]\)" instead of "^", so that
":buf stor<Tab>" finds both "include/storage.h" and "storage/main.c".

To count items (pattern matches) without changing the buffer the 'n' flag has
been added to |:substitute|.  See |count-items|.

The "screen.linux" $TERM name is recognized to set the default for
'background' to "dark". (Ciaran McCreesh)  Also for "cygwin".

The |FileChangedShell| autocommand event can now use the |v:fcs_reason|
variable that specifies what triggered the event.  |v:fcs_choice| can be used
to reload the buffer or ask the user what to do.

==============================================================================
COMPILE TIME CHANGES					*compile-changes-7*

Dropped the support for the BeOS and Amiga GUI.  They were not maintained and
probably didn't work.  If you want to work on this: get the Vim 6.x version
and merge it back in.

Mac: "make" now creates the Vim.app directory and "make install" copies it to
its final destination. (Raf)

Mac: Made it possible to compile with Motif, Athena or GTK without tricks and
still being able to use the MacRoman conversion.  Added the os_mac_conv.c
file.

When running the tests and one of them fails to produce "test.out" the
following tests are still executed.  This helps when running out of memory.

==============================================================================
BUG FIXES						*bug-fixes-7*

When using PostScript printing on MS-DOS the default 'printexpr' used "lpr"
instead of "copy".  When 'printdevice' was empty the copy command did not
work.  Use "LPT1" then.

The GTK font dialog uses a font size zero when the font name doesn't include a
size.  Use a default size of 10.

This example in the documentation didn't work:
    :e `=foo . ".c" `
Skip over the expression in `=expr` when looking for comments, |, % and #.

When ":helpgrep" doesn't find anything there is no error message.

"L" and "H" did not take closed folds into account.

Win32: The "-P title" argument stopped at the first title that matched, even
when it doesn't support MDI.

Mac GUI: CTRL-^ and CTRL-@ did not work.

"2daw" on "word." at the end of a line didn't include the preceding white
space.

Win32: Using FindExecutable() doesn't work to find a program.  Use
SearchPath() instead.  For executable() use $PATHEXT when the program searched
for doesn't have an extension.

When 'virtualedit' is set, moving the cursor up after appending a character
may move it to a different column.  Was caused by auto-formatting moving the
cursor and not putting it back where it was.

When indent was added automatically and then moving the cursor, the indent was
not deleted (like when pressing ESC).  The "I" flag in 'cpoptions' can be used
to make it work the old way.

When opening a command-line window, 'textwidth' gets set to 78 by the Vim
filetype plugin.  Reset 'textwidth' to 0 to avoid lines are broken.

After using cursor(line, col) moving up/down doesn't keep the same co