Buffer

a part of vim's memory that can hold text

  • This is normally in the form of:
    • an actual file
    • text stored temporarily (yank, paste etc)
  • when opening an existing file, the text of that file is copied and put into a new buffer. When we save that text, the original file is replaced by writing the buffer to disk
  • buffer list vs argument list
    • argument list is subset of buffer list
    • buffer list can be seen as more random access, while argument list could have more organization to it
      • if you are working with only a few files in your current micro session, you'd have just those ones in the arg list, while having many more in the buffer list
    • idea is that we might have lots of buffers open, and want to execute a macro across many files, but not all buffers.
      • one solution is to prune the buffer list, but the most practical solution is to populate the argument list with just the files we are interested in.