Vim: Use Drop Not Edit, SBuffer Not Buffer

I’m going to assume you are a Vim user.

Say you have a several windows open in Vim and you want to edit another file. Using :edit works if you want to open the file in the current window unconditionally.

But that’s often not what you want. If you have the same file open in another window, then the most efficient and least disruptive thing to do is to switch to that window.

drop

That’s where :drop comes in. In case you aren’t familiar with the drop command, have a look at the help page in your favorite editor (:help drop) or here on the web. But the gist of it is that for most people¹ :drop {file} will:

• Switch to the window in which {file} is already open.
• Switch the buffer in the current window to {file} otherwise.

The :drop command is intended to be used as the “open buffer” command for automated tooling like source browsers. For example, you can configure coc-nvim GitHub to use :drop as the command used for opening a source file by setting coc.preferences.jumpCommand to drop. See :help coc-configuration for details on how to set this, but basically it’s as simple as opening up the configuration using :CocConfig and then adding a "coc.preferences.jumpCommand": "drop", mapping to the configuration JSON file.

switchbuf or swb

Or perhaps configuring each plugin is too much work. Enter switchbuf. This is a global setting in Vim that controls how Vim switches between buffers.

Setting set switchbuf=useopen has the same effect when invoking buffer. Note that using sbuffer, sbnext, or sbrewind automatically behaves as if this is the case. I.e. they will use an existing window if one already has the buffer open.

Setting set switchbuf=usetab is similar to the effect of useopen except that it will look through windows in other tabs.

See :help switchbuf or here on the web for full details.