bunlink.vim

Designed to be a replacement for :bdelete, this plugin can delete your buffers without destroying your windows/splits. It decouples the concept of 'deleting a buffer' from 'closing a window'. It offers three commands to do this, with increasing seriousness: :Bunlink, :Bdelete, and :Bwipeout. By default, when you call :Bunlink, the following happens:

1. If the current window is a help, quickfix, command history window or a similar temporary window, close the window anyway.

2. Otherwise the current window's buffer is changed intelligently to another hidden but loaded buffer, or if no such buffer exists, a new buffer.

3. If the old buffer is not viewed anymore in any window, delete it.

The last step is very similar to linux's unlink which only truly deletes a file if no hardlinks remain to it (for clarity: bunlink.vim never deletes any files, it strictly works with buffers). See below in the configuration what 'a similar temporary window' and 'intelligently' exactly mean.

Using :Bunlink instead of :bdelete means you can keep your buffer list clean without worrying about destroying your splits or affecting any window except the current one.

:Bdelete [B] calls :Bunlink for every window that holds buffer [B] (defaulting to the current buffer if not specified), thus making sure that the buffer is truly deleted. :Bwipeout [B] works like :Bdelete but also wipes out the buffer afterwards (see :h bwipeout).

All commands warn you if you're trying to delete a buffer with unsaved changes, which can be bypassed by adding !. However :Bunlink never warns you if you're viewing the buffer in a second window, as there's no risk of losing your changes then.

Installation

Install using your favorite package manager, e.g. using vim-plug:

Plug 'orlp/vim-bunlink'

Configuration

Using g:bunlink_switch_order you can determine in what order bunlink.vim tries to find a buffer to switch to. Each entry must start with w, t, or m (respectively meaning window-local, tab-local and global), followed by a colon and either mru (most recently used) or mfu (most frequently used) followed by an optional :modified to only match if the buffer is modified. The default order is:

let g:bunlink_switch_order = ['w:mru', 't:mfu:modified', 't:mfu', 'g:mfu:modified', 'g:mfu']

If bunlink.vim can't find a suitable buffer after this list has been exhausted, it will create a new buffer. To prevent clutter this buffer will delete ifself upon being hidden if not modified in any way.

With g:bunlink_delete_window_ft you can determine for which filetypes bunlink.vim will delete the entire window, rather than changing to a different buffer. The default is:

let g:bunlink_delete_window_ft = 'help,qf,vim-plug,nerdtree,cheat40'

By default the command history window also has this behavior. You can always override the behavior of bunlink.vim by setting b:bunlink_should_delete to either 0 or 1 on a buffer (e.g. with an autocmd).

Mappings

There's no mappings defined in bunlink.vim by default, I personally use these mappings in my vimrc:

nnoremap <silent> <leader>x :Bunlink<CR>
nnoremap <silent> <leader>X :Bunlink!<CR>

License

This plugin is licensed under the zlib license.