How can I pare down Vim's buffer list to only include active buffers
- by nelstrom
How can I pare down my buffer list to only include buffers that are currently open in a window/tab?
When I've been running Vim for a long time, the list of buffers revealed by the :ls command is too large to work with. Ideally, I would like to delete all of the buffers which are not currently visible in a tab or window by running a custom command such as :Only. Can anybody suggest how to achieve this?
It looks like the :bdelete command can accept a list of buffer numbers, but I'm not sure how to translate the output from :ls to a format that can be consumed by the :bdelete command. Any help would be appreciated.
Clarification
Lets say that in my Vim session I have opened 4 files. The :ls command outputs:
:ls
1 a "abc.c"
2 h "123.c"
3 h "xyz.c"
4 a "abc.h"
Buffer 1 is in the current tab, and and buffer 4 is in a separate tab, but
buffers 2 and 3 are both hidden. I would like to run the command :Only, and
it would wipe buffers 2 and 3, so the :ls command would output:
:ls
1 a "abc.c"
4 a "abc.h"
This example doesn't make the proposed :Only command look very useful, but
if you have a list of 40 buffers it would be very welcome.
