How to change the folder path for swp files in Vim

vim swapfile
sica07 picture sica07 · Oct 28, 2009 · Viewed 46.1k times · Source

I'm working at a project on a remote server. I don't want to have the swap files on the server. I would like all swap files for Vim (and, of course, gVim) to be saved on the specified directory. How could I do that?

Answer

maerics picture maerics · Jan 9, 2014

You can set the directory option to the location that you want vim to store its swap files, e.g.:

 mkdir -p $HOME/.vim/swapfiles  # this dir must exist vi does not create it

" $HOME/.vimrc
:set directory=$HOME/.vim/swapfiles//

I use trailing double path separators because, from the help docs:

For Unix and Win32, if a directory ends in two path separators "//" or "\\", the swap file name will be built from the complete path to the file with all path separators substituted to percent '%' signs. This will ensure file name uniqueness in the preserve directory.

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