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Tip 862 • Previous Tip • Next Tip

Created: January 25, 2005 Complexity: intermediate Author: Charles E. Campbell, Jr. Minimum version: 6.0 Karma: 81/44 Imported from: Tip#862

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Suppose you have three windows in a "horizontal list", like this:

W|W|W

Entering the command:

:windo wincmd K

will change the windows to a "vertical list", like this:

W
W
W

Starting with a "vertical list", entering the command:

:windo wincmd H

will change the windows to a "horizontal list".

[edit] Comments

Very useful, I already added it as a command to my vimrc:

command -nargs=0 MyArrangeWindowsVertically :windo wincmd K
cnoremap <unique> myawv MyArrangeWindowsVertically
command -nargs=0 MyArrangeWindowsHorizontally :windo wincmd H
cnoremap <unique> myawh MyArrangeWindowsHorizontally

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I should mention that there's a shorter pair of commands that almost does the same thing:

:sba
:vert sba

The difference is that these two commands will open a window for all buffers on the buffer list, not just re-arrange the display of current windows. Try :ls! to see the buffer list.

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The following two maps help with window resizing:

nmap + <C-W>+
nmap - <C-W>-

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I've written a small plugin (twl.vim) that implements :TWL (toggle window layout) which detects which type of window layout you currently have (vertical vs horizontal) and applies the correct command to toggle the layout. Its at http://mysite.verizon.net/astronaut/vim/index.html#VimFuncs (see "Toggle Window Layout").

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