Practical Vim

Tip 113

Understand the Source of Keywords

Generic keyword autocompletion compiles its word list from a handful of sources. We can be more specific about which sources we want to use to build a word list.

Several variant forms of autocompletion use a specific file or set of files to generate their word list. Generic keyword autocompletion uses an amalgamation of these word lists. To understand where generic keywords come from, we should first look at each of the more targeted forms of autocompletion.

The Buffer List

The simplest mechanism for populating the autocomplete word list would be to use words only from the current buffer. Current file keyword completion does just that and is triggered with <C-x><C-n> (see compl-current​). This can ...