Vim - Add a file to the staging area

This is a mapping that adds the current file to the git staging area.

vim

nnoremap <leader>ga :silent !git add %<CR>

This won't work if the file is not located within your current working directory.

How can you determine the current working directory?

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:pwd

To change to the directory of the current file:

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:cd %:h

Change to the parent directory.

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:cd ../

Change to the home directory.

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:cd ~

Or simply.

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:cd

But let's get back to the mapping.

vim

nnoremap <leader>ga :silent !git add %<CR>

How does it work?

The shell command - `!{cmd}`

The shell command lets you execute a {cmd} with the shell.

The shell is defined by the 'shell' option. The default is $SHELL or "sh" or on Win32 it's "cmd.exe".

Example: List directory contents

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:!ls

If {cmd} contains "%" it is expanded to the current file name.

Example: Add current file contents to git index

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:!git add %

The last is part to understand is :silent.

The silent command lets you execute a {cmd} silently.

Example: Show the working tree git status

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:!git status

Example: Show the working tree git status, silently

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:silent !git status

This is useful for commands that have output we don't care about.

Let's go back to the mapping again.

vim

nnoremap <leader>ga :silent !git add %<CR>

We don't care about the output of this command.

I hope this has been helpful. Take it easy, my friends.