lost.vim

Vim plugin to provide a command to help you orient yourself when editing a large chunk of code. While we should try to avoid having huge functions or huge classes or huge blobs of code, they will likely exist forever and I aim to make working with them less painful.

Example

Imagine you have the following code block, and the cursor is where the | is:

sub foo {
   # 1000 lines of nonsense
   |dwigt();
   # 1000 more lines of nonsense
}

If you run the :Lost command you will see sub foo { at the bottom of your vim window. Nice!

Inspiration

(The following is quoted from the blog post where I had the idea for this tool.)

One of the subtle brilliances that git provides is context other than simple line numbers in diffs. I know that it wasn't the first tool to implement such a feature (diff -p does the same thing) but it was the first one that I've seen use it by default. For example, the diff here includes the following snippet:

@@ -33,9 +44,9 @@ sub _defaults {
    my ($self, $params) = @_;

    $params->{namespace}           ||= [ get_namespace_parts($self) ]->[0];
-   $params->{left_method}         ||= String::CamelCase::decamelize($params->{left_class});
-   $params->{right_method}        ||= String::CamelCase::decamelize($params->{right_class});
-   $params->{self_method}         ||= String::CamelCase::decamelize($self);
+   $params->{left_method}         ||= $decamelize->($params->{left_class});
+   $params->{right_method}        ||= $decamelize->($params->{right_class});
+   $params->{self_method}         ||= $decamelize->($self);
    $params->{left_method_plural}  ||= $self->_pluralize($params->{left_method});
    $params->{right_method_plural} ||= $self->_pluralize($params->{right_method});
    $params->{self_method_plural}  ||= $self->_pluralize($params->{self_method});

The top of the snippet is the function that the change was made in. The context is not always perfect, but it's right so often it is astounding. This is exactly what I wanted, but generalized.

Installation

If you don't have a preferred installation method, I recommend installing pathogen.vim, and then simply copy and paste:

cd ~/.vim/bundle
git clone git://github.com/frioux/vim-lost

Once help tags have been generated, you can view the manual with :help lost.

Self-Promotion

Like lost.vim? Follow the repository on GitHub. And if you're feeling especially charitable, follow frioux on Twitter and GitHub.

License

Copyright (c) Arthur Axel fREW Schmidt. Distributed under the same terms as Vim itself. See :help license.