Excluding the filename and extension which would have to type out in any case, there are actually only 22 keystrokes there. So, not dozens. You could also not

Excluding the filename and extension which would have to type out in any case, there are actually only 22 keystrokes there. So, not dozens. You could also not bother destroying the old buffer. You could also do: :!mv % newfile.txt<cr><cr>:e newfile.txt Again excluding the filename and extension, that's a total of 12 keystrokes. And again, this is not a task anyone spends much of their working life performing. Give up.