Vim Essential Plugin: PeepOpen
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Vim Essential Plugin: PeepOpen

on May 2nd 2011 with 24 comments
Tutorial Details
  • Plugin: PeepOpen
  • Screencast Length: 4 Minutes
  • OS: Mac
This entry is part 8 of 8 in the Vim Essential Plugins Session
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In this episode of our “Vim Essential Plugins” quick tip series, we’ll take a look at the only application in our list that isn’t free: PeepOpen. But, don’t let this deter you from picking up one of the most useful applications available for Vim users.

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Usage

Usage

Like the other plugins that have been featured in this Session, PeepOpen is essentially a file explorer — but a beautiful and incredibly fast one at that. Somewhat uniquely, PeepOpen is an application that is stored in your menu bar.

PeepOpen Menu

You’ll find that this application isn’t limited only to Vim users, though. Nope – from Coda, to TextMate, to Emacs…all the best Mac editors are available. Sorry Windows users. You’re out in the cold for this one, unfortunately.

Preferences

Upon viewing the preferences section of the app, you’ll find a helpful tab that allows you to specify which file types to ignore — such as DS_STORE, .swp, etc. The PeepOpen team have already taken care of the most pertinent file types for you.

Within MacVim, PeepOpen can be triggered by typing Control + o. At this point, you can type any sequence of characters to identify the file that you wish to access, and note that this is fuzzy searching.

And it’s really as simple as that. Rather than opening the file explorer, or wasting time searching through your buffers, simply use PeepOpen. It’ll save you an incredible amount of time over the course of the year.

 
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  • http://www.modernooze.com sam – dorset web design

    Very handy chap thank you

  • Unnecessary

    While this looks good, buying it is quite unnecessary.

    Command-T (https://wincent.com/products/command-t) does a perfectly good job and is open source.

  • Tim Shortt

    If you’re on Windows, the Search Everything app provides similar functionality.

  • Thiago A. Silva

    If you don’t wanna spend 12 bucks I recommend a ruby script called commant-T:

    https://github.com/vim-scripts/Command-T

    It does essentially the same thing with a native vim look, but from what I read it doesn’t have the toggle functionality. For toggling between buffers, you can use vim`s default default keystroke: control-shift-^. I map comand-t’s trigger to cmd-r, because I’d rather use cmd-t to open new tabs, instead of :tabnew. Though, tabs are not a feature I use much… only when I want to have viewports with lots of splits.

  • Thiago A. Silva

    I forgot to say… you can also specify file patterns to ignore, using vim’s wildignore feature.

    :help command-t

  • wburningham

    I liked the plugin, but I have used FuzzyFinder for free. It does the same fuzzy search pattern and if you create a simple text file for your project with the folders/files to search, you can make a function that searches only that project (see details here: http://goo.gl/WjPqA). I’ve loved your tutorials.

    • http://www.nathan-long.com Nathan Long

      I’ll second Fuzzy Finder – takes some tweaking as do all things Vim-ish, but it works well.

  • windows 7

    Sorry Windows users. You’re out in the cold for this one, unfortunately.

    Damn it.

  • http://itcutives.com Jatin

    Nice plugin. Thanks.

  • tc

    “Sorry Windows users. You’re out in the cold for this one, unfortunately.”
    Not really! As Tim Shortt says Search Everything does an even better job for Windows ;-P

  • Josh

    Bah! It seems that it wants to open new files in new windows! It didn’t look like it did that in the video. Gotta be an option somewhere…

    • Josh

      Found it! There was an option in MacVim that I overlooked.

  • Emmanuel

    I have buy the plug in install it on Macvim but it doesnt work. It seems the command have change weirdly to (Restart Vim, open a Vim project and type p to choose a file with PeepOpen.) but when i type it and it send an error

    • http://blog.lloydsays.com Lloyd Moore

      you have to type p. is normally / by default but if you have changed it (as I have, to ‘,’) then type that as your leader instead

  • http://www.andredublin.com Andre Dublin

    These vim tutorials and plugin reviews have been great. I went through all your postings over the last two days and already I’m noticing a increase in productivity. Coming from coda, I used the coda books when I wanted a reference or needed to remember a function or something else. I did a quick search and came across this http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=273 its a tag list for many programming languages. Check it out!

  • http://www.andredublin.com Andre Dublin

    Oh and it requires this plugin http://ctags.sourceforge.net/

  • http://www.elventails.com elvy

    Its weird that you completely missed the true to nature, free, open source Fuzzy Finder plugin:
    http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1984

    I am in no way affiliated with the Orwellian id of the above script. :)

    So, no, I don’t think there is a need to pay $12 for the above plugin.

    Also see: http://linsong.github.com/2010/03/20/super-finder-in-vim.html

    In all cases, thanks for the great write-up, and keep em coming!

  • http://www.wanged.com Charles

    I just installed this plugin yesterday because a co-worker recommended it. Luckily, I’m a peepcode subscriber and downloaded it with my yearly pass. I think this plugin works great with adding additional functionality to the existing command-t option in Textmate. I am currently using the PeepOpen tool with Textmate for the time being, until I get more comfortable with MacVim.

    As for whether its worth $12, it really depends on your workflow and how much you use this command. I use the command-t option in Textmate on a daily basis for work, school projects, and outside projects. Its just one of those essential shortcuts you need to save you just that extra amount of time. The features that I enjoy about this plugin is that it provides the fuzzy searching, a nicer looking interface, and also some source control integration. Its nice to see my most recent Git commits.

  • http://www.benedikt-wolters.de Benedikt Wolters

    I’m using a Plugin called “FuzzyFinder” which i find more convenient like this GUIsh window thingy.
    It also support regexes

  • travis

    hey, which plugin is at the tail end of this video where you say ‘well talk about this in the next video’ and it has live syntax highlighting? thanks

  • http://www.iwebprovider.com Innovative Web Provider

    This come in handy. I’ve been looking for this kind of application. Thanks!

  • http://twitter.com/twosevenzero Dave West

    I know this is an old post but since Jose just did his Venture into Vim series and referenced this, I thought I would add that the plugin “command-t” does the same thing and works just like ST2′s control+p command. The one major bonus is that it is free.

  • http://twitter.com/HSteffenhagen Hannes Steffenhagen

    Eh, looks cool but OSX only isn’t something I can live with – I haven’t used a mac in ever, and I’m not planning to in the foreseeable future.

  • Flav

    Ctrl-O, Enter = Ctrl-6, it’s standard vim folks.