Learning the vi and Vim Editors, 7th Edition

Keyword and Dictionary Word Completion

Vim offers a comprehensive suite of insertion-completion capabilities. From programming language-specific keywords to filenames, dictionary words, and even entire lines, Vim knows how to offer possible completions to partially entered text. Not only that, but Vim abstracts the semantic of dictionary-based completion to include completions based on synonyms for the completed word from a thesaurus!

In this section we look at the different completion methods, their syntaxes, and descriptions of how they work with examples. The methods of completion include:

• Whole line

• Current file keywords

• dictionary option keywords

• thesaurus option keywords

• Current and included file keywords

• Tags (as in ctags)

• Filenames

• Macros

• Vim command line

• User-defined

• Omni

• Spelling suggestions

• complete option keywords

Except for complete keywords, all completion commands start with CTRL-X. The second key specifically defines the type of completion Vim attempts. For example, the command to autocomplete filenames is CTRL-X CTRL-F. (Not all the commands are so mnemonic, unfortunately.) Vim uses unmapped (default) keys, which allows you to shorten most of these commands to just the second keystroke by mapping the commands appropriately. (For instance, you can map CTRL-X CTRL-N to just CTRL-N.)

All completion methods have virtually identical behavior: they cycle through a list of candidate completions as you retype the second keystroke. Thus, if you choose filename autocompletion through CTRL-X ...