Fast help in full window

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created April 9, 2009 · complexity basic · author Walf · version 7.0

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Sometimes you may want to start Vim to look at a specific help page. I have these two functions in my ~/.bashrc for this purpose.

To open the help page for a given word from the command line:

vimhelp()
{
  view -c "help $1" -c on -c "au! VimEnter *"
}

and the same with helpgrep (you need the command Vim, not view because of the quickfix window)

vimhelpgrep()
{
  vim -c "helpgrep $1" -c on -c copen -c "au! VimEnter *"
}

Now you can invoke the function with your search and Vim opens the desired help page. With the ;vimhelpgrep function it opens an additional quickfix window and goes to the first hit.