actually, i went looking last night, vim is definately scriptable to your hearts content. i found the totally-rockin 'taglist.vim' which provides sweet navigation through your files. i also saw scripts that changed the behavior of TAB depending on whether it was the first key pressed on a new line (indent), otherwise (word-complete), shift-TAB being (word-complete-backwards).

the scripts look something like:

" Tlist_Cleanup()
" Cleanup all the taglist window variables.
function! s:Tlist_Cleanup()
    if has('syntax')
        silent! syntax clear TagListTitle
    endif
    match none

    if exists('b:tlist_ftype') && b:tlist_ftype != ''
        let count_var_name = 's:tlist_' . b:tlist_ftype . '_count'
        if exists(count_var_name)
            let old_ftype = b:tlist_ftype
            let i = 1
            while i <= s:tlist_{old_ftype}_count
                let ttype = s:tlist_{old_ftype}_{i}_name
                let j = 1
                let var_name = 'b:tlist_' . old_ftype . '_' . ttype . 
+'_count'
                if exists(var_name)
                    let cnt = b:tlist_{old_ftype}_{ttype}_count
                else
                    let cnt = 0
                endif
                while j <= cnt
                    unlet! b:tlist_{old_ftype}_{ttype}_{j}
                    let j = j + 1
                endwhile
                unlet! b:tlist_{old_ftype}_{ttype}_count
                unlet! b:tlist_{old_ftype}_{ttype}_start
                let i = i + 1
            endwhile
        endif
    endif

    " Clean up all the variables containing the tags output
    if exists('b:tlist_tag_count')
        while b:tlist_tag_count > 0
            unlet! b:tlist_tag_{b:tlist_tag_count}
            let b:tlist_tag_count = b:tlist_tag_count - 1
        endwhile
    endif

    unlet! b:tlist_bufnum
    unlet! b:tlist_bufname
    unlet! b:tlist_ftype
endfunction
[download]

the deal with the syntax-highlighting is that if it knows what color to make something as soon as i type it (and knows when to change the color back to normal) then it has the brains to do further modifications like putting 'sub X {}' when you type sub (with cursor left on X), hit right-arrow or space and 'X' dissapears and cursor goes inside '{}' for anonymous sub, or type a subname and 'space' will take you to inside '{}'. i believe having highlighting (the way vim seems to do it) implies being able to smart-complete.

i hope cperl-mode is smart enough that if that were:

do { something(); } while <FOO

# wouldn't get you

do { something(); } while (<FOO>) {}
[download]

and now that i actually know vim has auto-complete (Ctrl-N and Ctrl-P in insert mode) i might be able to break myself of my love for short variable names...

i suggest anybody who uses vim go check out the Tips section on http://www.vim.org. there's even...

    ASCII ART!

+----------+
|          |                  *******
|    +----------+           **.......**
|    |     |    |         **...........**
+----|-----+    |         *..*********..*
     |          |         ***         ***
     +----------+       **++**       **++**         -------|>
                       *++++++*******++++++*       /
                       *+++++++++++++++++++*      /
     -----------\      *+++++++++++++++++++*     /
                 \      **+++++++++++++++**     /
                  \       ***+++++++++***      /
                   \         *********        /
                    \                        /
                     \                      /
                      ---------------------/
[download]

but i think we've gone way OT.

actually, i went looking last night, vim is definately scriptable to your hearts content

Hmmm... Well, then, I'll have to move learning vim up into the part of my TODO list that might actually get done, then :-) It would be nice to have a second editor, for situations where Emacs isn't installed, especially for cases where I'm only working on a system for a short while, since installing Emacs takes so long...

i hope cperl-mode is smart enough that if that were: do { something(); } while <FOO # wouldn't get you do { something(); } while (<FOO>) {}

Yes, of course. And I only scratched the surface of the stuff it does for you.

but i think we've gone way OT.

I find it impossible to feel bad about going OT in a thread that started out as a place to rant.

---

for(unpack("C*",'GGGG?GGGG?O__\?WccW?{GCw?Wcc{?Wcc~?Wcc{?~cc'
.'W?')){$j=$_-63;++$a;for$p(0..7){$h[$p][$a]=$j%2;$j/=2}}for$
p(0..7){for$a(1..45){$_=($h[$p-1][$a])?'#':' ';print}print$/}
[download]