On 2008-11-23, David <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Every time I try to use :help I become frustrated. I have just spent a > couple of hours trying in vain to find out some elementary things. I > tried :help comment. I was indeed able to learn what the default > comment symbol was, but only by paying careful attention, because this > passage was clearly written for someone who already knew that the > comment symbol is a double quote mark. > Q1. Where is the article that explains to a beginner that the default > comment symbol is a double quote mark?
I finally found it here: :help vim-script-intro and then searched for "comment". I can understand your frustration. > Q2. How should I have proceeded to find that section of help? I don't know. After trying the "obvious" places, as you did, I decided to look in whatever section covered writing configuration (e.g., .vimrc) or script files. I finally did find the definitive help topic on this: :help :" or :help :quote Unfortunately, that topic can only be found if you already know that " is used for vim comments. I found it by knowing that : begins every help topic on ex commands and that " is used within ex commands. > Q3. Suppose there are 25 sections of help that discuss comment > symbols. Is there a convenient way to find them all? And how could I > conveniently work through them systematically? If you want to find all the help keywords containing "comment", type :help comment then type Ctrl-D for a list of matches. This is mentioned near the top of :help and under :help help as are other techniques. For example, you can execute ":help" then :tag /comment and traverse the resulting list of tags. You can use ":helpgrep" to search the help files for a pattern and traverse the resulting quickfix list. > Q4. Does the format *:comment* have a particular significance? It must > have, because one finds it everywhere in the help files. What is less > apparent is what it means and whether one can use it to jump to a > suitable topic. Those are help tags. They are the targets of jumps. The tags you can jump to are surrounded by || as described at the top of ":help". Unfortunately, recent releases of vim seem to highlight the * and | characters used for help tags with the Ignore highlight group for the sake of "readability", so you may not see them and may have to rely on other highlighting cues to recognize them. > > In sample vimrc files on the web, I found entries as follows: > set comments+=b:\" > set comments+=n:: > Q5. How could I find out what += means here? I mean by using vim help, > not by asking this news group. I tried :help += and obtained an > article on the use of :let, which I do not consider relevant. That's because that help command took you to the first article in the help tags list containing "+=". If you had typed :help += followed by Ctrl-D, would have seen the ":set+=" tag as well. If you had known about Ctrl-D, that is. Or you could have gone for :help :set and scrolled down a bit to find the entry discussing +=. > Q6. What is the meaning of += here? :help :set+= > Q7. What is the meaning of the b: and n: in this context? :help comments would refer you to :help format-comments which explains those. > > Here is the problem I started with at the beginning of my 2 hours of > frustration: > I tried Unix>vim>following_command > > :.!date " and here I put a comment > > and received error messages. > The problem is not, as I mistakenly thought, with the comment symbol, > but, as you experts undoubtedly realise instantly, with the fact that > vim is feeding back the whole line > > date " and here I put a comment > > to the Unix shell for interpretation. This brings me to my final > question: > Q8. Is there any way of telling vim not to feed the whole line to the > Unix shell, but only the initial part? I tried shielding the comment > part by inserting a | as shown to me by the vim online help response > to :help comment, but it didn't work. (This all occurs in something I > am trying to automate in a source file of vim commands, and that's why > I do want to include a comment. I suppose I could give up and put the > comment elsewhere, where vim would find it less puzzling, but a human > reader would find it more puzzling.) You could use a shell comment instead of a vim comment, escaping the # so that vim didn't expand it as the alternate file name, e.g., !date \# put comment here You could instead use :exe to execute the !date command and follow that with a vim comment, but I think that would be even less readable. > > Thanks very much for your patience if you have managed to stick with > me this far, and many thanks in advance for any help. Apologies for > asking so many questions, but it might have been much more irritating > if I had used 8 postings for my 8 questions. If there are any > responders, I would be grateful if you could say which of my 8 > questions you are answering. The customary technique for replying to questions in mailing lists and newsgroups is to quote the questions and to reply to each question immediately below the quoted question, as I have done here. Most experienced users will follow this custom. I hope that's been helpful. There are other ways to search the help files and others may discuss those. I tried to stay away from techniques I don't use myself and those that might rely on my customizations. Regards, Gary --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message from the "vim_use" maillist. For more information, visit http://www.vim.org/maillist.php -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
