lost.vim: for when you're lost in a file

I wrote a plugin on Friday to making orienting yourself in a large piece of code easier. The short version is that with the new plugin lost.vim you can call :Lost or use the gL mapping to find your bearings.

A couple weeks ago I wrote a post about file-context, a commandline tool that would give the “context” of a single line of code in a given file. I implemented it as a vim plugin.

🔗 What does lost.vim do?

The context for any of the lines in the following selections of would be the first line of each, which with the plugin get echoed when you press gL or call :Lost:

sub perl_func {
  # a thousand lines of code
}

def python_func():
  # a thousand lines of code

function javascript_func() {
  // a thousand lines of code
}

func go_function() {
  // a thousand lines of code
}

my $var = {
   # A thousand lines of hash
};

🔗 How does it work?

Initially I assumed that git(1) used some kind of deep magic and actual parsing to do the above, which is why in the original blog post I literally shelled out to git and then parsed the diff. Then on twitter Aristotle Pagaltzis showed me how it actually works.

The tool searches backwards for a line that starts with any alphabetical character, or underscore, or $. The main failure is when working in a language where functions definitions are indented; Java, C#, and some JavaScript tend to look this way.

The new version is not just hugely more efficient (before it was copying files, running programs, doing parsing, etc) but it also works with unwritten files and is pure vim with literally no requirements other than vim.

My instinct is to extend this to work with formats that it does not already work with, like markdown, but I honestly think that would be gilding the lily.

By the way while markdown like the following does not work:

## The Beginning

Originally I had planned to take a bus to my first stop at 5:30 am, but the guy
that I work with, Kenton, offered to drive me because he was going for groceries
anyway. That was nice and made the trip better since I did not have to take that
long, boring, cramped bus ride. After arriving in La Ceiba Kenton and his wife
Saundi showed me a number of different things that are good gifts to give in the
states. I will not enumerate said gifts because readers may end up being
recipients of the gifts.

this renders the same and does work:

The Beginning
=============

 Originally I had planned to take a bus to my first stop at 5:30 am, but the guy
 that I work with, Kenton, offered to drive me because he was going for
 groceries anyway. That was nice and made the trip better since I did not have
 to take that long, boring, cramped bus ride. After arriving in La Ceiba Kenton
 and his wife Saundi showed me a number of different things that are good gifts
 to give in the states. I will not enumerate said gifts because readers may end
 up being recipients of the gifts.

I don’t really care though; I don’t edit much (any?) markdown that would benefit from lost.vim.

I hope you check out the plugin and find it as useful as I do; feel free to let me know on twitter or in the comments on anything that you would improve.

(The following includes affiliate links.)

If you’d like to learn more about vim, I can recommend two excellent books. I first learned how to use vi from Learning the vi and Vim Editors. The new edition has a lot more information and spends more time on Vim specific features. It was helpful for me at the time, and the fundamental model of vi is still well supported in Vim and this book explores that well.

Second, if you really want to up your editing game, check out Practical Vim. It’s a very approachable book that unpacks some of the lesser used features in ways that will be clearly and immediately useful. I periodically review this book because it’s such a treasure trove of clear hints and tips.

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