In vim, how can I map "save" (:w) to ctrl-s.

I am trying "map" the command, but xterm freezes when I press ctrl-s.

If I give ctrl-v,ctrl-s still I see only a ^, not ^S.

3

4 Answers

Ctrl+S is a common command to terminals to stop updating, it was a way to slow the output so you could read it on terminals that didn't have a scrollback buffer. First find out if you can configure your xterm to pass Ctrl+S through to the application. Then these map commands will work:

noremap <silent> <C-S> :update<CR>
vnoremap <silent> <C-S> <C-C>:update<CR>
inoremap <silent> <C-S> <C-O>:update<CR>

BTW: if Ctrl+S freezes your terminal, type Ctrl+Q to get it going again.

5

In linux with VI, you want to press Ctrl-S and have it save your document. This worked for me, put the following three lines in your .vimrc file. This file should be located in your home directory: /home/el/.vimrc If this file doesn't exist you can create it.

:nmap <c-s> :w<CR>
:imap <c-s> <Esc>:w<CR>a

The first line says: pressing Ctrl-S within a document will perform a :w <enter> keyboard combination.

The second line says: pressing Ctrl-S within a document while in 'insert' mode will escape to normal mode, perform a :w <enter, then press a to get back into insert mode. Your cursor may move during this event.

You may notice that pressing Ctrl-S performs an 'XOFF' which stops commands from being received (If you are using ssh).

To fix that, place these two commands in your ~/.bash_profile

bind -r '\C-s'
stty -ixon

What that does is turn off the binding of Ctrl-S and gets rid of any XOFF onscreen messages when pressing Ctrl-S. Note, after you make changes to your .bash_profile you have to re-run it with the command 'source .bash_profile' or logout/login.

More Info:

6

vim

# ~/.vimrc
nnoremap <c-s> :w<CR> # normal mode: save
inoremap <c-s> <Esc>:w<CR>l # insert mode: escape to normal and save
vnoremap <c-s> <Esc>:w<CR> # visual mode: escape to normal and save

zsh (if you use)

# ~/.zshrc
# enable control-s and control-q
stty start undef
stty stop undef
setopt noflowcontrol

bash (if you use)

# ~/.bash_profile or ~/.bashrc
# enable control-s and control-q
stty -ixon

1

Mac OSX Terminal + zsh?

In your .zprofile

alias vim="stty stop '' -ixoff; vim"

Why?, What's happening? See Here, but basically for most terminals ctrl+s is already used for something, so this alias vim so that before we run vim we turn off that mapping.

In your .vimrc

nmap <c-s> :w<cr>
imap <c-s> <esc>:w<cr>a

Why? What's happening? This one should be pretty obvious, we're just mapping ctrl+s to different keystrokes depending on if we are in normal mode or insert mode.

1

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Sign up using Google Sign up using Facebook Sign up using Email and Password Submit

Post as a guest

Post Your Answer Discard

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy