i'm still not a vim power user by any means, but i've noticed that when i

'vim a_directory'

" <enter> : open file or directory
" o : open new window for file/directory
" O : open file in previously visited window
" p : preview the file
" i : toggle size/date listing
" s : select sort field    r : reverse sort
" - : go up one level      c : cd to this dir
" R : rename file          D : delete file
" :help file-explorer for detailed help
" Sorted by name (.bak,~,.o,.h,.info,.swp,.obj at end of list)
"= /home/me/omatic/
../
fri/
friday/
fridaytwo/
pres/
sat/
saturday/
sun/
sunday/
thursday/
tue/
tuesday/
:call <SNR>2_ToggleHelp()                                     12,1    
+      Top
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and i remember back in decades past that there were macros that could create and solve a maze. i simply assume that vim is Turing Complete and if you liked you could make it do whatever you wanted. but it might be like programming in brainf*ck.

it also does syntax-highlighting on the fly as i type so it could probably do any other work on the fly as well.

my whole take on the emacs thing is you don't have an editor with a scripting language, you have a scripting language with an editor module as the default interface. the web-browser is written in lisp and uses the editor module for input/output. =P

i'm still not a vim power user by any means, but i've noticed that when i 'vim a_directory' it pops up in a dired like mode.

That's not what I asked. I had a DOS-based editor that did that fifteen years ago, and it didn't even have macro facilities, much less was scriptable.

and i remember back in decades past that there were macros that could create and solve a maze. i simply assume that vim is Turing Complete

That's not what I asked, either. In fact, I think I specifically said that a macro facility, however advanced, is not the same thing as being fully scriptable. If I have to stop my editing and do something else special in order to invoke the macros... my keyboard can do (a limited amount of) that on its own, irrespective of what editor I am using. But that's not enough for serious use. I need the editor itself to be scriptable, meaning that I can script arbitrary things to happen as a natural part of the editing process. Have you ever seen cperl-mode in action, for example? I type while <FOO and get the following:

while (<FOO>) {
}
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More usefully, I have my own custom stuff for editing CGI scripts. It uses cperl-mode but does some extra things on its own, such as automatically inserting close tags when I put in open tags (in strings), to ensure wellformed XHTML. (It also has a lot of very site-specific stuff in it too.)

it also does syntax-highlighting on the fly

A lot of editors do syntax highlighting without being anything that resembles scriptable.

my whole take on the emacs thing is you don't have an editor with a scripting language, you have a scripting language with an editor module as the default interface.

I suppose that's a fair enough description of it. It's an approach that creates a lot of flexibility and power.

---

for(unpack("C*",'GGGG?GGGG?O__\?WccW?{GCw?Wcc{?Wcc~?Wcc{?~cc'
.'W?')){$j=$_-63;++$a;for$p(0..7){$h[$p][$a]=$j%2;$j/=2}}for$
p(0..7){for$a(1..45){$_=($h[$p-1][$a])?'#':' ';print}print$/}
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actually, i went looking last night, vim is definately scriptable to your hearts content. i found the totally-rockin 'taglist.vim' which provides sweet navigation through your files. i also saw scripts that changed the behavior of TAB depending on whether it was the first key pressed on a new line (indent), otherwise (word-complete), shift-TAB being (word-complete-backwards).

the scripts look something like:

" Tlist_Cleanup()
" Cleanup all the taglist window variables.
function! s:Tlist_Cleanup()
    if has('syntax')
        silent! syntax clear TagListTitle
    endif
    match none

    if exists('b:tlist_ftype') && b:tlist_ftype != ''
        let count_var_name = 's:tlist_' . b:tlist_ftype . '_count'
        if exists(count_var_name)
            let old_ftype = b:tlist_ftype
            let i = 1
            while i <= s:tlist_{old_ftype}_count
                let ttype = s:tlist_{old_ftype}_{i}_name
                let j = 1
                let var_name = 'b:tlist_' . old_ftype . '_' . ttype . 
+'_count'
                if exists(var_name)
                    let cnt = b:tlist_{old_ftype}_{ttype}_count
                else
                    let cnt = 0
                endif
                while j <= cnt
                    unlet! b:tlist_{old_ftype}_{ttype}_{j}
                    let j = j + 1
                endwhile
                unlet! b:tlist_{old_ftype}_{ttype}_count
                unlet! b:tlist_{old_ftype}_{ttype}_start
                let i = i + 1
            endwhile
        endif
    endif

    " Clean up all the variables containing the tags output
    if exists('b:tlist_tag_count')
        while b:tlist_tag_count > 0
            unlet! b:tlist_tag_{b:tlist_tag_count}
            let b:tlist_tag_count = b:tlist_tag_count - 1
        endwhile
    endif

    unlet! b:tlist_bufnum
    unlet! b:tlist_bufname
    unlet! b:tlist_ftype
endfunction
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the deal with the syntax-highlighting is that if it knows what color to make something as soon as i type it (and knows when to change the color back to normal) then it has the brains to do further modifications like putting 'sub X {}' when you type sub (with cursor left on X), hit right-arrow or space and 'X' dissapears and cursor goes inside '{}' for anonymous sub, or type a subname and 'space' will take you to inside '{}'. i believe having highlighting (the way vim seems to do it) implies being able to smart-complete.

i hope cperl-mode is smart enough that if that were:

do { something(); } while <FOO

# wouldn't get you

do { something(); } while (<FOO>) {}
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and now that i actually know vim has auto-complete (Ctrl-N and Ctrl-P in insert mode) i might be able to break myself of my love for short variable names...

i suggest anybody who uses vim go check out the Tips section on http://www.vim.org. there's even...

    ASCII ART!

+----------+
|          |                  *******
|    +----------+           **.......**
|    |     |    |         **...........**
+----|-----+    |         *..*********..*
     |          |         ***         ***
     +----------+       **++**       **++**         -------|>
                       *++++++*******++++++*       /
                       *+++++++++++++++++++*      /
     -----------\      *+++++++++++++++++++*     /
                 \      **+++++++++++++++**     /
                  \       ***+++++++++***      /
                   \         *********        /
                    \                        /
                     \                      /
                      ---------------------/
[download]

but i think we've gone way OT.