Vim: Stop "existing swap file" warnings

Question

I have no idea why, but it seems that no matter how I quit out of Vim, it always leaves the swap files behind. So, whenever I open that file again, I get an irritating error about an existing swap file. Every time I have to choose "delete". I really wish this would stop. Is there anything I can put in my .vimrc to tell it, "just delete the swap file if it exists and leave me alone?"

Answer 1

In .vimrc add:

set shortmess+=A 

From the docs :help shortmess:

A don't give the "ATTENTION" message when an existing swap file is found.

Answer 2

There is plugin that can "Just do the right thing" automatically for Vim swapfiles: vim-autoswap.

From the homepage:

Dealing with swap files is annoying. Most of the time you have to deal with a swap file because you either have the same file open in another window or it is a swap file left there by a previous crash.

This plugin does for you what you would do in these cases:

• Is file already open in another Vim session in some other window?
• If so, swap to the window where we are editing that file.
• Otherwise, if swapfile is older than file itself, just get rid of it.
• Otherwise, open file read-only so we can have a look at it and may save it.