Tip #55: previous buffer

One of the keys to vim is buffer management. If I have to use another IDE that makes me click on a tab every time I want to look at another file I'm going to go postal.

So of course you know about :ls which lists all the current open buffers. This gets a little unweildly once you have a full project open so you can also use :b <any snipit of text> <tab> to complete to an open buffer. This is really nice because you can type any fragment of a file name and it will complete to the matching file. (i.e. RequestManager.java can be completed using "tma"<tab> or "req"<tab> or "r.java"<tab>).

Now for awhile I was also using :bn and :bp which jumps you to the next and previous buffer respectively. I found I was often frustrated because I wanted :bp to be the previous buffer I was in, not the previous buffer in the list. So (drum roll) the reason I wrote this tip was because of:

:b#

jump to the previous buffer you were in. Very very handy. The only thing nicer are tag, but that's a tip for another time.

:help buffers
:help bn
:help bp

If anybody knows where to get help on # in this context please add notes.

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