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>> I'm sad to see VimScript de-emphasized, having invested a good bit of time in getting good with it, but VimScript is pretty slow, so this is good news. I'm

>> I'm sad to see VimScript de-emphasized, having invested a good bit of time in getting good with it, but VimScript is pretty slow, so this is good news. I'm a Vim enthusiast who hasn't tried Emacs, but one thing I've heard that makes me jealous is that they can script their editor using a flavor of Lisp. This is extra awesome for devs whose primary language is already Lisp. Sometimes I wish for a Vim-like editor with a nicer scripting language, but "Vim-like" is such a huge target at this point that any effort is bound to displease most users by omitting the one tiny feature they personally love. If Python becomes useful for scripting Vim, that would be awesome in my book.

sophacles 13y ago
Ive always thought Lua would be a good vim scripting language. * It's designed to be embedded * It's easy to expose functionality and API's * It's fast * IME if other languages are also embedded, and a thoughtful API/plugin arch is created, functionality from other language plugins can be easily accessed in lua. (I know, bunch of caveats there, but if I'm dreaming...)
- Avshalom 13y ago
  only thing about Lua is that strings are immutable so certain kinds of operations can be very slow.
  - hetman 13y ago
    They are also immutable in Python.
    - ShawnBird 13y ago
      What are you talking about? http://docs.python.org/2/library/string.html http://docs.python.org/2/library/string.html
      - pyre 13y ago
        >>> a = "string" >>> a[1] = 'g' Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> TypeError: 'str' object does not support item assignment >>> b = a.replace('t', 'g') >>> b 'sgring' >>> a 'string' >>> id(b) 3065252256L >>> id(a) 3075481632L Also from here[1]: Strings and tuples are immutable sequence types: such objects cannot be modified once created. [1] http://docs.python.org/2/library/stdtypes.html#mutable-sequence-types http://docs.python.org/2/library/stdtypes.html#mutable-seque...
        ShawnBird 13y ago
        Oh. I guess I never thought of strings as immutable because there are so many ways to change them.
        noselasd 13y ago
        Given that they're immutable, you cannot change them. Instead all the operations returns a new, modified, string.
      - deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
- hsitz 13y ago
  Vim supports scripting with Lua similar to the support it already has for Python, Perl, Ruby, Racket. Your instance of Vim just has to be compiled with that option. See ':h lua'. One major problem with its support for scripting languages has been that you can't count on other users having a Vim compiled with proper support. This includes Python, although more recently some distributions (e.g., I think, Ubuntu) have had standard Vims where Python support was by default compiled in. Apparently improvements to Python interface in 7.4 will go beyond those currently offered for outside languages, which many find somewhat clunky.
  - sophacles 13y ago
    Oh yeah, the Lua support is there, I was meaning a concentrated effort to have Lua replace VimScript completely.
  - gnosis 13y ago
    99% of vim scripts still use VimScript. I think this happens for a few reasons: - First, as you pointed out, not every user is guaranteed to have your favorite language installed. But they will have VimScript whenever they use vim. - Second, even if a user has your favorite language installed, the version of vim they have might not be compiled with bindings for that language. Only VimScript is guarateed to be compiled in. - Third, VimScript is the only language in vim that's not crippled in some way in respect to functionality. All the other languages it supports have to rely on VimScript itself in order to perform some vim-related functions. In some languages, this makes it so that you might as well be using VimScript to begin with.
    - siddboots 13y ago
      #2 has been the biggest drawback in my experience. It often isn't realistic to compile your editor from scratch, particularly when you are working in a windows environment without administrator rights to your machine. This means that any extensions (e.g. dbext) dependent on those bindings are unavailable. Is there a reason why there is no portable binary compiled with bindings for perl, python, lua, et cetera?
  - 13y ago
rgrau 13y ago
evil-mode[1] is a really well crafted vim emulator for emacs. Not those clunky emulations that barely do hjkl but something that replicates even text objects or repeat (.) . This made my migration from vim to emacs possible. [1] http://gitorious.org/evil/pages/Home http://gitorious.org/evil/pages/Home
- gnosis 13y ago
  After over 20 years of very happily using vim and other vi-clones, I'm in the process of making emacs+evil my main editor. Making the switch is slow and painful for this veteran vim user who has perfected his vim environment, but I can already see that the emacs environment that I build will be superior... eventually. Plus, I get the joy of scripting my editor in elisp and eventually guile (I hope). No more vimscript for me! That said, vim is a wonderful editor. Even if vim ultimately isn't as flexible as emacs, it's still incredibly powerful; and there's a lot of cross-fertilization going on between the two editors, with vim users getting inspired by emacs features and packages and writing vim equivalents and vice-versa.
  - eric-hu 13y ago
    I'm thinking of making the switch. Are you able to port your vim plugins to emacs in evil mode?
    - gnosis 13y ago
      I don't know if it's possible to automatically port vim plugins to evil. However, according to the emacswiki page on evil[1], a number of vim plugins have been ported: evil-surround: Port of Vim’s surround script. evil-numbers: Vim-like increment and decrement. evil-leader: Port of Vim’s mapleader. evil-rails: Port of rails.vim. evil-nerd-commenter: Port of Vim’s Nerd-Commenter Also, there are many emacs packages that provide functionality that's more or less equivalent to various vim plugins (sometimes even unenhanced emacs will already be capable of doing what you need). Just a couple of tips for vim fans giving emacs+evil a go: * Don't expect to quickly master emacs or quickly be able to replicate the vim environment you spent years perfecting. Getting emacs set up nicely will take a lot of learning, tweaking and hacking (especially if you want to make it more vim-like). Be prepared for that. * Come to #emacs and #evil-mode on freenode for help. * You might want to go through the emacs tutorial (C-h t) before you install evil or do any other customizations. That'll teach you some basics of emacs that you'll run in to elsewhere, and help minimize confusion. * Search the emacswiki[2] on any topics you're interested in. There's a lot of good stuff there. [1] - http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Evil http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Evil [2] - http://www.emacswiki.org http://www.emacswiki.org
johncoltrane 13y ago
You can write plugins with Racket. However the API is AFAIK the same as for Python or Ruby so you can't really escape vimscript.
UNIXgod 13y ago
Want lisp the original source for Bill Joy's vi supports it. http://ex-vi.sourceforge.net/ http://ex-vi.sourceforge.net/ Happy hacking =)

sophacles 13y ago

Ive always thought Lua would be a good vim scripting language. * It's designed to be embedded * It's easy to expose functionality and API's * It's fast * IME if other languages are also embedded, and a thoughtful API/plugin arch is created, functionality from other language plugins can be easily accessed in lua. (I know, bunch of caveats there, but if I'm dreaming...)

Avshalom 13y ago
only thing about Lua is that strings are immutable so certain kinds of operations can be very slow.
- hetman 13y ago
  They are also immutable in Python.
  - ShawnBird 13y ago
    What are you talking about? http://docs.python.org/2/library/string.html http://docs.python.org/2/library/string.html
    - pyre 13y ago
      >>> a = "string" >>> a[1] = 'g' Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> TypeError: 'str' object does not support item assignment >>> b = a.replace('t', 'g') >>> b 'sgring' >>> a 'string' >>> id(b) 3065252256L >>> id(a) 3075481632L Also from here[1]: Strings and tuples are immutable sequence types: such objects cannot be modified once created. [1] http://docs.python.org/2/library/stdtypes.html#mutable-sequence-types http://docs.python.org/2/library/stdtypes.html#mutable-seque...
      - ShawnBird 13y ago
        Oh. I guess I never thought of strings as immutable because there are so many ways to change them.
        noselasd 13y ago
        Given that they're immutable, you cannot change them. Instead all the operations returns a new, modified, string.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
hsitz 13y ago
Vim supports scripting with Lua similar to the support it already has for Python, Perl, Ruby, Racket. Your instance of Vim just has to be compiled with that option. See ':h lua'. One major problem with its support for scripting languages has been that you can't count on other users having a Vim compiled with proper support. This includes Python, although more recently some distributions (e.g., I think, Ubuntu) have had standard Vims where Python support was by default compiled in. Apparently improvements to Python interface in 7.4 will go beyond those currently offered for outside languages, which many find somewhat clunky.
- sophacles 13y ago
  Oh yeah, the Lua support is there, I was meaning a concentrated effort to have Lua replace VimScript completely.
- gnosis 13y ago
  99% of vim scripts still use VimScript. I think this happens for a few reasons: - First, as you pointed out, not every user is guaranteed to have your favorite language installed. But they will have VimScript whenever they use vim. - Second, even if a user has your favorite language installed, the version of vim they have might not be compiled with bindings for that language. Only VimScript is guarateed to be compiled in. - Third, VimScript is the only language in vim that's not crippled in some way in respect to functionality. All the other languages it supports have to rely on VimScript itself in order to perform some vim-related functions. In some languages, this makes it so that you might as well be using VimScript to begin with.
  - siddboots 13y ago
    #2 has been the biggest drawback in my experience. It often isn't realistic to compile your editor from scratch, particularly when you are working in a windows environment without administrator rights to your machine. This means that any extensions (e.g. dbext) dependent on those bindings are unavailable. Is there a reason why there is no portable binary compiled with bindings for perl, python, lua, et cetera?
- 13y ago

rgrau 13y ago

evil-mode[1] is a really well crafted vim emulator for emacs. Not those clunky emulations that barely do hjkl but something that replicates even text objects or repeat (.) . This made my migration from vim to emacs possible. [1] http://gitorious.org/evil/pages/Home http://gitorious.org/evil/pages/Home

gnosis 13y ago
After over 20 years of very happily using vim and other vi-clones, I'm in the process of making emacs+evil my main editor. Making the switch is slow and painful for this veteran vim user who has perfected his vim environment, but I can already see that the emacs environment that I build will be superior... eventually. Plus, I get the joy of scripting my editor in elisp and eventually guile (I hope). No more vimscript for me! That said, vim is a wonderful editor. Even if vim ultimately isn't as flexible as emacs, it's still incredibly powerful; and there's a lot of cross-fertilization going on between the two editors, with vim users getting inspired by emacs features and packages and writing vim equivalents and vice-versa.
- eric-hu 13y ago
  I'm thinking of making the switch. Are you able to port your vim plugins to emacs in evil mode?
  - gnosis 13y ago
    I don't know if it's possible to automatically port vim plugins to evil. However, according to the emacswiki page on evil[1], a number of vim plugins have been ported: evil-surround: Port of Vim’s surround script. evil-numbers: Vim-like increment and decrement. evil-leader: Port of Vim’s mapleader. evil-rails: Port of rails.vim. evil-nerd-commenter: Port of Vim’s Nerd-Commenter Also, there are many emacs packages that provide functionality that's more or less equivalent to various vim plugins (sometimes even unenhanced emacs will already be capable of doing what you need). Just a couple of tips for vim fans giving emacs+evil a go: * Don't expect to quickly master emacs or quickly be able to replicate the vim environment you spent years perfecting. Getting emacs set up nicely will take a lot of learning, tweaking and hacking (especially if you want to make it more vim-like). Be prepared for that. * Come to #emacs and #evil-mode on freenode for help. * You might want to go through the emacs tutorial (C-h t) before you install evil or do any other customizations. That'll teach you some basics of emacs that you'll run in to elsewhere, and help minimize confusion. * Search the emacswiki[2] on any topics you're interested in. There's a lot of good stuff there. [1] - http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Evil http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Evil [2] - http://www.emacswiki.org http://www.emacswiki.org

johncoltrane 13y ago

You can write plugins with Racket. However the API is AFAIK the same as for Python or Ruby so you can't really escape vimscript.

UNIXgod 13y ago

Want lisp the original source for Bill Joy's vi supports it. http://ex-vi.sourceforge.net/ http://ex-vi.sourceforge.net/ Happy hacking =)