Problem: cannot perform autocompletion
Solution: Add the 'autocomplete' option value
(Girish Palya)
This change introduces the 'autocomplete' ('ac') boolean option to
enable automatic popup menu completion during insert mode. When enabled,
Vim shows a completion menu as you type, similar to pressing |i\_CTRL-N|
manually. The items are collected from sources defined in the
'complete' option.
To ensure responsiveness, this feature uses a time-sliced strategy:
- Sources earlier in the 'complete' list are given more time.
- If a source exceeds its allocated timeout, it is interrupted.
- The next source is then started with a reduced timeout (exponentially
decayed).
- A small minimum ensures every source still gets a brief chance to
contribute.
The feature is fully compatible with other |i_CTRL-X| completion modes,
which can temporarily suspend automatic completion when triggered.
See :help 'autocomplete' and :help ins-autocompletion for more details.
To try it out, use :set ac
You should see a popup menu appear automatically with suggestions. This
works seamlessly across:
- Large files (multi-gigabyte size)
- Massive codebases (:argadd thousands of .c or .h files)
- Large dictionaries via the `k` option
- Slow or blocking LSP servers or user-defined 'completefunc'
Despite potential slowness in sources, the menu remains fast,
responsive, and useful.
Compatibility: This mode is fully compatible with existing completion
methods. You can still invoke any CTRL-X based completion (e.g.,
CTRL-X CTRL-F for filenames) at any time (CTRL-X temporarily
suspends 'autocomplete'). To specifically use i_CTRL-N, dismiss the
current popup by pressing CTRL-E first.
---
How it works
To keep completion snappy under all conditions, autocompletion uses a
decaying time-sliced algorithm:
- Starts with an initial timeout (80ms).
- If a source does not complete within the timeout, it's interrupted and
the timeout is halved for the next source.
- This continues recursively until a minimum timeout (5ms) is reached.
- All sources are given a chance, but slower ones are de-prioritized
quickly.
Most of the time, matches are computed well within the initial window.
---
Implementation details
- Completion logic is mostly triggered in `edit.c` and handled in
insexpand.c.
- Uses existing inc_compl_check_keys() mechanism, so no new polling
hooks are needed.
- The completion system already checks for user input periodically; it
now also checks for timer expiry.
---
Design notes
- The menu doesn't continuously update after it's shown to prevent
visual distraction (due to resizing) and ensure the internal list
stays synchronized with the displayed menu.
- The 'complete' option determines priority—sources listed earlier get
more time.
- The exponential time-decay mechanism prevents indefinite collection,
contributing to low CPU usage and a minimal memory footprint.
- Timeout values are intentionally not configurable—this system is
optimized to "just work" out of the box. If autocompletion feels slow,
it typically indicates a deeper performance bottleneck (e.g., a slow
custom function not using `complete_check()`) rather than a
configuration issue.
---
Performance
Based on testing, the total roundtrip time for completion is generally
under 200ms. For common usage, it often responds in under 50ms on an
average laptop, which falls within the "feels instantaneous" category
(sub-100ms) for perceived user experience.
| Upper Bound (ms) | Perceived UX
|----------------- |-------------
| <100 ms | Excellent; instantaneous
| <200 ms | Good; snappy
| >300 ms | Noticeable lag
| >500 ms | Sluggish/Broken
---
Why this belongs in core:
- Minimal and focused implementation, tightly integrated with existing
Insert-mode completion logic.
- Zero reliance on autocommands and external scripting.
- Makes full use of Vim’s highly composable 'complete' infrastructure
while avoiding the complexity of plugin-based solutions.
- Gives users C native autocompletion with excellent responsiveness and
no configuration overhead.
- Adds a key UX functionality in a simple, performant, and Vim-like way.
closes: #17812
Signed-off-by: Girish Palya <girishji@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
Problem: cannot easily trigger wildcard expansion
Solution: Introduce wildtrigger() function
(Girish Palya)
This PR introduces a new `wildtrigger()` function.
See `:h wildtrigger()`
`wildtrigger()` behaves like pressing the `wildchar,` but provides a
more refined and controlled completion experience:
- Suppresses beeps when no matches are found.
- Avoids displaying irrelevant completions (like full command lists)
when the prefix is insufficient or doesn't match.
- Skips completion if the typeahead buffer has pending input or if a
wildmenu is already active.
- Does not print "..." before completion.
This is an improvement on the `feedkeys()` based autocompletion script
given in #16759.
closes: #17806
Signed-off-by: Girish Palya <girishji@gmail.com>
Co-authored-by: zeertzjq <zeertzjq@outlook.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
- Match Ex command modifiers and functions with the same name correctly.
E.g., :browse and browse().
- Match full :eval command.
closes: #17789
Signed-off-by: Doug Kearns <dougkearns@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
Don't match lower-case function names as errors when the qualifier
includes a dict/list accessor.
This is a less than perfect fix until qualified function call matching
is reworked.
fixes: #17766closes: #17780
Signed-off-by: Doug Kearns <dougkearns@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
Problem: not possible to anchor specific lines in difff mode
Solution: Add support for the anchoring lines in diff mode using the
'diffanchor' option (Yee Cheng Chin).
Adds support for anchoring specific lines to each other while viewing a
diff. While lines are anchored, they are guaranteed to be aligned to
each other in a diff view, allowing the user to control and inform the
diff algorithm what the desired alignment is. Internally, this is done
by splitting up the buffer at each anchor and run the diff algorithm on
each split section separately, and then merge the results back for a
logically consistent diff result.
To do this, add a new "diffanchors" option that takes a list of
`{address}`, and a new "diffopt" option value "anchor". Each address
specified will be an anchor, and the user can choose to use any type of
address, including marks, line numbers, or pattern search. Anchors are
sorted by line number in each file, and it's possible to have multiple
anchors on the same line (this is useful when doing multi-buffer diff).
Update documentation to provide examples.
This is similar to Git diff's `--anchored` flag. Other diff tools like
Meld/Araxis Merge also have similar features (called "synchronization
points" or "synchronization links"). We are not using Git/Xdiff's
`--anchored` implementation here because it has a very limited API
(it requires usage of the Patience algorithm, and can only anchor
unique lines that are the same across both files).
Because the user could anchor anywhere, diff anchors could result in
adjacent diff blocks (one block is directly touching another without a
gap), if there is a change right above the anchor point. We don't want
to merge these diff blocks because we want to line up the change at the
anchor. Adjacent diff blocks were first allowed when linematch was
added, but the existing code had a lot of branched paths where
line-matched diff blocks were handled differently. As a part of this
change, refactor them to have a more unified code path that is
generalized enough to handle adjacent diff blocks correctly and without
needing to carve in exceptions all over the place.
closes: #17615
Signed-off-by: Yee Cheng Chin <ychin.git@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
- Match the range prefix separately as a count.
- Match an explicit count of 1, rarely used but seen in the wild.
- Allow whitespace between the count and command.
closes: #17717
Signed-off-by: Doug Kearns <dougkearns@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
- Match more function calls.
- Contain function call syntax groups.
- Improve differentiation between Ex commands and builtin functions with
the same name. Remove special cases. Command modifiers are not
currently well differentiated from functions.
closes: #17712
Signed-off-by: Doug Kearns <dougkearns@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
Problem: The maximum search count uses a hard-coded value of 99
(Andres Monge, Joschua Kesper)
Solution: Make it configurable using the 'maxsearchcount' option.
related: #8855fixes: #17527closes: #17695
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
Problem: Patch 9.1.1505 was not good
Solution: Revert "patch 9.1.1505: not possible to return completion type
for :ex command" and instead add the getcompletiontype()
function (Hirohito Higashi).
related: #17606closes: #17662
Co-authored-by: Shougo Matsushita <Shougo.Matsu@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Hirohito Higashi <h.east.727@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Shougo Matsushita <Shougo.Matsu@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
- Match escape sequences in :command replacement blocks.
- Match :substitute after escape sequences (a temporary fix until Ex
commands are contained).
fixes: #17326closes: #17663
Signed-off-by: Doug Kearns <dougkearns@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
- Match Conceal, ComplMatchIns, MsgArea, Terminal, and User[1-9]
highlight groups.
- Generate the vimGroup syntax group from runtime/syncolor.vim.
- Match :SynColor and :SynLink as special user commands.
fixes#17467closes: #17556
Signed-off-by: Doug Kearns <dougkearns@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
Generate Ex command modifiers from the modifier table in src/ex_docmd.c
closes: #17564
Signed-off-by: Doug Kearns <dougkearns@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
Set minlines and maxlines to 100 and 200 respectively. Set these after
the script interface syntax files have been loaded to ensure the values
set in those are overridden.
fixes#17580closes: #17614
Signed-off-by: Doug Kearns <dougkearns@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
Problem: missing Wayland clipboard support
Solution: make it work (Foxe Chen)
fixes: #5157closes: #17097
Signed-off-by: Foxe Chen <chen.foxe@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
The unamed register may be referenced as both @" and @@.
Remove the unused vimPlainRegister syntax group.
fixes: #17603.
closes: #17605
Signed-off-by: Doug Kearns <dougkearns@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
Don't match the OR operator in expressions as a trailing bar.
closes: #17533
Signed-off-by: Doug Kearns <dougkearns@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
Remove unmatchable :normal {mark,register} matches. The arg to :normal
is now handled separately and contained marks and registers are no
longer matched.
closes: #17571
Signed-off-by: Doug Kearns <dougkearns@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
The required space in Vim9 continuation comments (#\ comment) was
accidentally removed in commit 6acca4b as trailing whitespace.
closes: #17573
Signed-off-by: Doug Kearns <dougkearns@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
There is no pattern after the user event name. The user event name is
the pattern.
closes: #17568
Signed-off-by: zeertzjq <zeertzjq@outlook.com>
Signed-off-by: Doug Kearns <dougkearns@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
- Fix highlighting of function names including /fu\%[nction]/ (E.g.,
s:func(), foo.fu(), fu.func())
- Match :delfunction argument.
Reported by Aliaksei Budavei.
closes: #17428
Signed-off-by: Doug Kearns <dougkearns@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
Limit heredoc matches to assignment statements. Matching these at the
top level is very slow.
closes: #17473
Signed-off-by: Doug Kearns <dougkearns@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
The opening curly brace must be followed by whitespace, comment or
trailing bar.
closes: #17454
Signed-off-by: Doug Kearns <dougkearns@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
Match full :profile and :profdel commands.
closes: #17420
Signed-off-by: Doug Kearns <dougkearns@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
- Match full :mark and :k commands.
- Match 2 and 3 letter :s repeat commands.
- Match :s [count] argument.
closes: #17408
Signed-off-by: Doug Kearns <dougkearns@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
- Match comments and trailing bar after :set without args.
- Match the <...> form for key code options.
- Remove orphaned vim_ex_python[3x]* dump files (Aliaksei Budavei).
closes: #17397
Signed-off-by: Doug Kearns <dougkearns@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
We shouldn't assume that the luaParenError syntax group is present in
the, possibly custom, included file or that it hasn't already been
removed. However, issue #11277 has been fixed so it no longer needs to
be cleared.
Fixes comment https://github.com/vim/vim/pull/15375#issuecomment-2899791944
related: #15375closes: #17357
Signed-off-by: Doug Kearns <dougkearns@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
- Match "autoload" as a keyword in :import commands.
- Match an expression argument for the filename.
closes: #15375
Signed-off-by: Doug Kearns <dougkearns@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
- Normalise interface heredoc highlighting with that used for
:let-heredocs.
- Remove interface feature testing. The Lua and Python interface
command scripts are now highlighted by default. Loading all syntax
files incurs an undesirable load-time burden so highlighting of the
less popular MzScheme, Perl, Ruby and Tcl interfaces is disabled by
default. g:vimsyn_embed can still be used to customise the supported
interfaces.
- Always highlight interface ex-commands as valid commands, even when
the corresponding command-script highlighting is disabled.
- Highlight simple command-script statements as well as heredocs.
- Remove error highlighting of heredoc and statement command-script
regions when an interface is disabled. These are now highlighted as
plain text.
- Allow indented heredoc end tokens when "trim" is specified.
- Match interface heredocs in :def functions.
- Fix runaway vimEmbedError regions. These regions have been removed.
- Use python2 syntax for :python, and :pythonx when 'pyxversion' is
appropriately set.
closes: #15522
Signed-off-by: Doug Kearns <dougkearns@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
Problem: Vim does not have a tabpanel
Solution: include the tabpanel feature
(Naruhiko Nishino, thinca)
closes: #17263
Co-authored-by: thinca <thinca@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Naruhiko Nishino <naru123456789@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
Match enum values and missing class keywords.
fixes: #15970
Signed-off-by: Doug Kearns <dougkearns@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
Match Vim9 comments at start-of-line (no leading whitespace) in
dictionaries, lists and parenthesised expressions and argument lists.
Addresses https://github.com/vim/vim/pull/14975#issuecomment-2832643115
Report and fix by Aliaksei Budavei.
closes: #17211
Signed-off-by: Doug Kearns <dougkearns@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
Continued strings are currently only matched after operators, in
parenthesised expressions and in function call argument lists.
closes: #14975
Signed-off-by: Doug Kearns <dougkearns@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
Problem: quickfix and location-list stack is limited to 10 items
Solution: add the 'chistory' and 'lhistory' options to configure a
larger quickfix/location list stack
(64-bitman)
closes: #16920
Co-authored-by: Hirohito Higashi <h.east.727@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: 64-bitman <60551350+64-bitman@users.noreply.github.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
Improve backslash handling in :set option values. There is no special
handling for options supporting Windows path separators yet.
See :help option-backslash.
Remove the vimSetString syntax group. Option string values cannot be
specified with a quoted string, this is a command terminating tail
comment.
fixes: #16913closes: #17034
Signed-off-by: Doug Kearns <dougkearns@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
