From Newsgroup: comp.editors

PSA:
How to list the last 100 files you've edited in the Windows gVim editor

Doing research all night, as I am wont to do, I was editing what started
out as a batch file but which turned into a long researched listing, and
then in the morning when the sun came up, I shut down the PC and when I
awoke I had forgotten where I had placed the long-edited text file.

I had completely forgotten, in the fog of late-night frenzy sans sleep,
that it was originally a batch file but turned into a simple text file.

I typed "q:" in an empty gvim session to get a list of prior commands,
where I could see some of my search-n-replace actions, but not file names.

I tried the Windows runbox pinned to my taskbar to enter "shell:recent"
but that C:\Users\.\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent folder
was completely empty (possibly due to Windows privacy settings).
Settings > Personalization > Start > Show recently opened items...
But more likely due to the fact that gVim is a win32 application overall.

There's the tedious way which I wouldn't use unless God ordered me to:
C:\> findstr /s /i /m "Some Word" C:\*.txt
(But it turns out that wouldn't have worked as it was in "x.bat".)

Of course I could ls -l the usual dirs but I knew what editor I was using
& I found that gvim 8.2 doesn't have a "recent files" GUI, but it has
:oldfiles
and these are essentially equivalent:
:browse old
:echo v:oldfiles

Which lists the full path to the prior 100 files you have been editing.
I didn't know about ":oldfiles" (which is a privacy issue also), so I
figured I'd let you guys who use the gVim editor know about this trick.
--
On Usenet, we're all old friends on the same kind & helpful team.
--- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.editors

Maria Sophia wrote on 4/3/2026 4:30 PM:

PSA:
How to list the last 100 files you've edited in the Windows gVim editor

Doing research all night, as I am wont to do, I was editing what started
out as a batch file but which turned into a long researched listing, and
then in the morning when the sun came up, I shut down the PC and when I
awoke I had forgotten where I had placed the long-edited text file.

I had completely forgotten, in the fog of late-night frenzy sans sleep,
that it was originally a batch file but turned into a simple text file.

I typed "q:" in an empty gvim session to get a list of prior commands,
where I could see some of my search-n-replace actions, but not file names.

I tried the Windows runbox pinned to my taskbar to enter "shell:recent"
but that C:\Users\.\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent folder
was completely empty (possibly due to Windows privacy settings).
Settings > Personalization > Start > Show recently opened items...
But more likely due to the fact that gVim is a win32 application overall.

There's the tedious way which I wouldn't use unless God ordered me to:
C:\> findstr /s /i /m "Some Word" C:\*.txt
(But it turns out that wouldn't have worked as it was in "x.bat".)

Of course I could ls -l the usual dirs but I knew what editor I was using
& I found that gvim 8.2 doesn't have a "recent files" GUI, but it has
:oldfiles
and these are essentially equivalent:
:browse old
:echo v:oldfiles

Which lists the full path to the prior 100 files you have been editing.
I didn't know about ":oldfiles" (which is a privacy issue also), so I
figured I'd let you guys who use the gVim editor know about this trick.

I couldn't get it to work on my Mac.


--- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.editors

Hank Rogers wrote:

:oldfiles
and these are essentially equivalent:
:browse old
:echo v:oldfiles

Which lists the full path to the prior 100 files you have been editing.

I couldn't get it to work on my Mac.

Hi Hank,

This is great information, as I hesitated from adding the Linux/Mac
folks to this PSA even as I was aware they often use gVim also.

Also, on macOS, a lot of people who say 'Vim' are actually running Neovim,
and Neovim does not use viminfo at all, so I just ask you to confirm,
as Neovim uses a different history system called ShaDa but I believe you
as you're technically competent - I just say that for others to benefit.

The rest below assumes you are not using Neovim, but unfortunately,
I don't have a Mac to test. But looking it up, you can use this
command to get the full story in a German-enigma kind of output.

:echo &viminfo
For me, on Windows, from running that command in gVim 8.2, I got:
'100,<50,s10,h,rA:,rB:
Where '100 means remember the last 100 files and
where <50 means store up to 50 lines of registers (like yy buffers) and
where s10 means store up to 10KiB of text from each register and
where h means do not store :history command-line history
(which may explain why my previous q: list was so short)
and where rA: and rB: mean do not store info about files on those drives
(which is apparently a Windows'ism from the floppy-disk era).

If we want more saved history, we can bump the 100 to 500 using
set viminfo='500,<100,s20,h
or even bump it alone
set viminfo='500

For your mac, I'm told (by Google) that Vim on macOS often ships with
viminfo disabled (as google said Apple's built-in /usr/bin/vim is compiled
with a minimal feature set) so Google told me to tell mac users to run

$ vim --version | grep viminfo
If you don't see "viminfo" in the result, you don't have that option.

On my machine, that reported

vim --version | grep viminfo

+cmdline_info +lambda +rightleft +viminfo
Where cmdline_info means my binary supports command-line UI feature
and where lambda means my binary supports lambda expressions
and where we rightleft means it supports right-to-left text editing
but where we really only care about viminfo which enables :oldfiles

If you don't see "viminfo", then you can install MacVim or Homebrew Vim:
$ brew install vim
$ brew install macvim

Also if your .vimrc has the viminfo set to nothing, that would do it too.
set viminfo=

Also, apparently older MacVim builds had a checkbox for viminfo:
MacVim > Preferences > General > Use viminfo

If you're using Neovim, it uses shada, not viminfo.
That ":oldfiles" still works, but only if ShaDa exists.

To test, look for "shada/main.shada" in the output from:
:echo stdpath('state')
If it's missing, this cryptical command forces Neovim to write it:
:qa

A quick diagnostic is tun these isnide of Vim/MacVim:
:echo has('viminfo')
Must be 1
:echo &viminfo
Must not be empty
:echo &viminfofile
Should point to something like ~/.viminfo
Then open and save a few files and run
:oldfiles

What does this report when pasted into your terminal?
$ vim --version | grep viminfo
$ vim --version | head -5
$ ls -l ~/.viminfo ~/.vim/viminfo 2>/dev/null
$ vim -Nu NONE -n --cmd 'echo &viminfo' --cmd 'q'

Disclaimer: I don't have a mac to test this against.
--
On Usenet, experience is meant to be passed along, not hoarded.
--- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2