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Created: June 3, 2003 Complexity: basic Author: maurice Minimum version: 6.0 Karma: 14/11 Imported from: Tip#481

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This is just a more flexible completion.

I made the following (example) to have a unique abbreviation:

iabbrev date^A <c-r>=strftime("%F")<cr>

Note that ^A is Control-A (insert with <c-v><c-a>).

This is to avoid the completion if you really want to write 'date'.

And now this mapping:

inoremap <c-b> <c-v><c-a><c-[>a

Now type date<c-b> in insert-mode and you will get the date.

[edit] Comments

So why not just use this?

iabbrev date^B <c-r>=strftime("%F")<cr>

Admittedly, it requires you to do something after the control-b (such as another key or escape), but you would do precisely the same thing anyway with the original procedure.

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