Closing and Quitting Windows
There are four different ways to close a window that are specific to window editing: quit, close, hide, and close all others.
^Wq
(or ^W^Q
, or :quit
) is really just a window version of the:quit
command. In its
simplest form (i.e., a single session edit with only one window), it
behaves exactly like vi’s :quit
command. If the hidden
option is set and the current window
is the last window on the screen referencing that file, the window is
closed but the file buffer is retained (it can be retrieved) and
hidden. In other words, Vim is still storing the file and you can
return to editing it later. If hidden
is not set, the
window is the last one referencing that file, and there are unsaved
changes in the current window buffer, the command fails in order to
avoid losing your changes. But if some other window displays the file,
the current window closes.
^Wc
(or :close[!]
) closes the current window. If the hidden
option is set and this is the last
window referencing this file, Vim closes the window and the buffer is
hidden. If this window is on a tab page and is the last window for
that tab page, the window and the tab page are
closed. As long as you don’t use the !
modifier, this
command will not abandon any file with unsaved changes. The
!
modifier tells Vim to close the current window
unconditionally.
Note
Note that this command does not use ^W^C
, because Vim uses ^C
to cancel
commands. Therefore, if you try to use ^W^C
, the ^C
simply cancels the command.
Similarly, ...
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