Vim, exit at current files location

Question

I run Vim and change my current location all the time via shortcuts.

Then when I exit Vim, I want to be in the directory of the file I was in, in the bash shell.

How do I go about doing that?

Answer 1

In multiprocess operating systems a subprocess cannot change anything in the parent process. But the parent process can cooperate so a subprocess can ask the parent process to do something for the subprocess. In your case on exit vim should return the last working directory and the shell should cd to it. I managed to implement cooperation this way:

In ~/.vimrc:

call mkdir(expand('~/tmp/vim'), 'p') " create a directory $HOME/tmp/vim
autocmd VimLeave * call writefile([getcwd()], expand('~/tmp/vim/cwd')) " on exit write the CWD to the file

In ~/.bashrc:

vim() {
    command vim "$@"
    rc=$?
    cd "`cat \"$HOME/tmp/vim/cwd\"`" && rm "$HOME/tmp/vim/cwd" &&
    return $rc
}