Problem: completion: not possible to delay the autcompletion
Solution: add the 'autocompletedelay' option value (Girish Palya).
This patch introduces a new global option 'autocompletedelay'/'acl' that
specifies the delay, in milliseconds, before the autocomplete menu
appears after typing.
When set to a non-zero value, Vim waits for the specified time before
showing the completion popup, allowing users to reduce distraction from
rapid suggestion pop-ups or to fine-tune the responsiveness of
completion.
The default value is 0, which preserves the current immediate-popup
behavior.
closes: #17960
Signed-off-by: Girish Palya <girishji@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
Problem: diff: using diff anchors with hidden buffers fails silently
Solution: Give specific error message for diff anchors when using hidden
buffers (Yee Cheng Chin).
Diff anchors currently will fail to parse if a buffer used for diff'ing
is hidden. Previously it would just fail as the code assumes it would
not happen normally, but this is actually possible to do if `closeoff`
and `hideoff` are not set in diffopt. Git's default diff tool "vimdiff3"
also takes advantage of this.
This fix this properly would require the `{address}` parser to be
smarter about whether a particular address relies on window position or
not (e.g. the `'.` address requires an active window, but `'a` or `1234`
do not). Since hidden diff buffers seem relatively niche, just provide a
better error message / documentation for now. This could be improved
later if there's a demand for it.
related: #17615closes: #17904
Signed-off-by: Yee Cheng Chin <ychin.git@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
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>
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>
Problem: defaults: 'showcmd' is not enabled in non-compatible mode on
Unix
Solution: Always enable 'showcmd' in non-compatible mode, drop it from
defaults.vim.
'showcmd' was already always enabled in Vim compatible mode except for
UNIX environments. So let's just enable it always, there is no good
reason why UNIX platforms should be handled differently than other
platforms, especially since `defaults.vim` did enable this option
anyhow.
closes: #17739
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: completion: search completion match may differ in case
(techntools)
Solution: add "exacttext" to 'wildoptions' value (Girish Palya)
This flag does the following:
exacttext
When this flag is present, search pattern completion
(e.g., in |/|, |?|, |:s|, |:g|, |:v|, and |:vim|)
shows exact buffer text as menu items, without
preserving regex artifacts like position
anchors (e.g., |/\<|). This provides more intuitive
menu items that match the actual buffer text. However,
searches may be less accurate since the pattern is not
preserved exactly.
By default, Vim preserves the typed pattern (with
anchors) and appends the matched word. This preserves
search correctness, especially when using regular
expressions or with 'smartcase' enabled. However, the
case of the appended matched word may not exactly
match the case of the word in the buffer.
fixes: #17654closes: #17667
Signed-off-by: Girish Palya <girishji@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
Problem: completion: can only complete from keyword characters
Solution: remove this restriction, allow completion functions when
called from i_CTRL-N/i_CTRL-P to be triggered from non-keyword
characters (Girish Palya)
Previously, functions specified in the `'complete'` option were
restricted to starting completion only from keyword characters (as
introduced in PR 17065). This change removes that restriction.
With this change, user-defined functions (e.g., `omnifunc`, `userfunc`)
used in `'complete'` can now initiate completion even when triggered
from non-keyword characters. This makes it easier to reuse existing
functions alongside other sources without having to consider whether the
cursor is on a keyword or non-keyword character, or worry about where
the replacement should begin (i.e., the `findstart=1` return value).
The logic for both the “collection” and “filtering” phases now fully
respects each source’s specified start column. This also extends to
fuzzy matching, making completions more predictable.
Internally, this builds on previously merged infrastructure that tracks
per-source metadata. This PR focuses on applying that metadata to
compute the leader string and insertion text appropriately for each
match.
Also, a memory corruption has been fixed in prepare_cpt_compl_funcs().
closes: #17651
Signed-off-by: Girish Palya <girishji@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
Problem: File paths change from symlink to target path after :cd command
when editing files through symbolic links
Solution: Add "~" flag to 'cpoptions' to control symlink resolution.
When not included (default), symlinks are resolved maintaining
backward compatibility. When included, symlinks are preserved
providing the improved behavior. (glepnir)
related: neovim/neovim#15695
closes: #17628
Signed-off-by: glepnir <glephunter@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
Problem: 'wildchar' does not work in search contexts
Solution: implement search completion when 'wildchar' is typed
(Girish Palya).
This change enhances Vim's command-line completion by extending
'wildmode' behavior to search pattern contexts, including:
- '/' and '?' search commands
- ':s', ':g', ':v', and ':vim' commands
Completions preserve the exact regex pattern typed by the user,
appending the completed word directly to the original input. This
ensures that all regex elements — such as '<', '^', grouping brackets
'()', wildcards '\*', '.', and other special characters — remain intact
and in their original positions.
---
**Use Case**
While searching (using `/` or `?`) for lines containing a pattern like
`"foobar"`, you can now type a partial pattern (e.g., `/f`) followed by
a trigger key (`wildchar`) to open a **popup completion menu** showing
all matching words.
This offers two key benefits:
1. **Precision**: Select the exact word you're looking for without
typing it fully.
2. **Memory aid**: When you can’t recall a full function or variable
name, typing a few letters helps you visually identify and complete the
correct symbol.
---
**What’s New**
Completion is now supported in the following contexts:
- `/` and `?` search commands
- `:s`, `:g`, `:v`, and `:vimgrep` ex-commands
---
**Design Notes**
- While `'wildchar'` (usually `<Tab>`) triggers completion, you'll have
to use `<CTRL-V><Tab>` or "\t" to search for a literal tab.
- **Responsiveness**: Search remains responsive because it checks for
user input frequently.
---
**Try It Out**
Basic setup using the default `<Tab>` as the completion trigger:
```vim
set wim=noselect,full wop=pum wmnu
```
Now type:
```
/foo<Tab>
```
This opens a completion popup for matches containing "foo".
For matches beginning with "foo" type `/\<foo<Tab>`.
---
**Optional: Autocompletion**
For automatic popup menu completion as you type in search or `:`
commands, include this in your `.vimrc`:
```vim
vim9script
set wim=noselect:lastused,full wop=pum wcm=<C-@> wmnu
autocmd CmdlineChanged [:/?] CmdComplete()
def CmdComplete()
var [cmdline, curpos, cmdmode] = [getcmdline(), getcmdpos(),
expand('<afile>') == ':']
var trigger_char = '\%(\w\|[*/:.-]\)$'
var not_trigger_char = '^\%(\d\|,\|+\|-\)\+$' # Exclude numeric range
if getchar(1, {number: true}) == 0 # Typehead is empty, no more
pasted input
&& !wildmenumode() && curpos == cmdline->len() + 1
&& (!cmdmode || (cmdline =~ trigger_char && cmdline !~
not_trigger_char))
SkipCmdlineChanged()
feedkeys("\<C-@>", "t")
timer_start(0, (_) => getcmdline()->substitute('\%x00', '',
'ge')->setcmdline()) # Remove <C-@>
endif
enddef
def SkipCmdlineChanged(key = ''): string
set ei+=CmdlineChanged
timer_start(0, (_) => execute('set ei-=CmdlineChanged'))
return key == '' ? '' : ((wildmenumode() ? "\<C-E>" : '') .. key)
enddef
**Optional: Preserve history recall behavior**
cnoremap <expr> <Up> SkipCmdlineChanged("\<Up>")
cnoremap <expr> <Down> SkipCmdlineChanged("\<Down>")
**Optional: Customize popup height**
autocmd CmdlineEnter : set bo+=error | exec $'set ph={max([10,
winheight(0) - 4])}'
autocmd CmdlineEnter [/?] set bo+=error | set ph=8
autocmd CmdlineLeave [:/?] set bo-=error ph&
```
closes: #17570
Signed-off-by: Girish Palya <girishji@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
Problem: documentation issues with Wayland
(after v9.1.1485)
Solution: Tweak documentation style. Capitalize the first letter of
Wayland (Hirohito Higashi)
related: #17619
Signed-off-by: Hirohito Higashi <h.east.727@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 'h' occasion is now used for "matched text of currently inserted
completion" (defaulting to ComplMatchIns).
closes: #17572
Signed-off-by: Doug Kearns <dougkearns@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
Before this commit, I had trouble finding information about configuring
the insert mode completion. In particular, it was not clear that the
'wildopt' config that I already had in my vimrc does not apply here.
Also, `insert.txt` barely mentioned 'completeopt' except when
describing popups (I was more interested in bash-like behavior
where the unique prefix of all completions is completed first).
I'm hoping these edits will make the relevant docs easier to find.
closes: #17515
Signed-off-by: Ilya Grigoriev <ilyagr@users.noreply.github.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
Problem: It is difficult to ignore all but some events.
Solution: Add support for a "-" prefix syntax in '(win)eventignore' that
subtracts an event from the ignored set if present
(Luuk van Baal).
closes: #17392
Signed-off-by: Luuk van Baal <luukvbaal@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
Problem: using f-flag in 'complete' conflicts with Neovims filename
completion (glepnir, after v9.1.1301).
Solution: use upper-case "F" flag for completion functions
(Girish Palya).
fixes: #17347closes: #17378
Signed-off-by: Girish Palya <girishji@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
Problem: not easily possible to complete from register content
Solution: add register-completion submode using i_CTRL-X_CTRL-R
(glepnir)
closes: #17354
Signed-off-by: glepnir <glephunter@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
Problem: The 'grepformat' option is global option, but it would be
useful to have it buffer-local, similar to 'errorformat' and
other quickfix related options (Dani Dickstein)
Solution: Add the necessary code to support global-local 'grepformat',
allowing different buffers to parse different grep output
formats (glepnir)
fixes: #17316closes: #17315
Signed-off-by: glepnir <glephunter@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>
Problem: Currently, 'smartcase' is respected when completing keywords
using <C-N>, <C-P>, <C-X><C-N>, and <C-X><C-P>. However, when
a user continues typing and the completion menu is filtered
using cached matches, 'smartcase' is not applied. This leads
to poor-quality or irrelevant completion suggestions, as shown
in the example below.
Solution: When filtering cached completion items after typing additional
characters, apply case-sensitive comparison if 'smartcase' is
enabled and the typed pattern includes uppercase characters.
This ensures consistent and expected completion behavior.
(Girish Palya)
closes: #17271
Signed-off-by: Girish Palya <girishji@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
Problem: GTK3 and GTK4 will drop numeric cursor support.
Solution: Adopt GTK3 code and use CSS cursor convention (Drew Vogel).
closes: #14610
Signed-off-by: Drew Vogel <dvogel@github>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>
