How to prevent vim from creating (and leaving) temporary files?

Question

I'd strongly recommend to keep working with swap files (in case Vim crashes).

You can set the directory where the swap files are stored, so they don't clutter your normal directories:

set swapfile
set dir=~/tmp

See also

:help swap-file

Put this in your .vimrc configuration file.

set nobackup

; For Windows Users to back to temp directory

set backup
set backupdir=C:\WINDOWS\Temp
set backupskip=C:\WINDOWS\Temp\*
set directory=C:\WINDOWS\Temp
set writebackup

On Windows add following lines to _vimrc

" store backup, undo, and swap files in temp directory
set directory=$HOME/temp//
set backupdir=$HOME/temp//
set undodir=$HOME/temp//

This answer applies to using gVim on Windows 10. I cannot guarantee the same results for other operating systems.

Add:

set nobackup
set noswapfile
set noundofile

To your _vimrc file.

Note: This is the direct answer to the question (for Windows 10) and probably not the safest thing to do (read the other answers), but this is the fastest solution in my case.