What is the leader in a vimrc file

Question

I see  lt leader gt  in many  vimrc files  and I am wondering what does it mean    What is it used for    Just a general overview of the purpose and usage would be great

User · Answer

Be aware that when you do press your  lt leader gt  key you have only 1000ms  by default  to enter the command following it   This is exacerbated because there is no visual feedback  by default  that you have pressed your  lt leader gt  key and vim is awaiting the command  and so there is also no visual way to know when this time out has happened   If you add set showcmd to your vimrc then you will see your  lt leader gt  key appear in the bottom right hand corner of vim  to the left of the cursor location  and perhaps more importantly you will see it disappear when the time out happens   The length of the timeout can also be set in your vimrc  see  help timeoutlen for more information

User · Answer

The  lt Leader gt  key is mapped to   by default   So if you have a map of  lt Leader gt t  you can execute it by default with   t   For more detail or re-assigning it using the mapleader variable  see   help leader   To define a mapping which uses the  mapleader  variable  the special string   lt Leader gt   can be used   It is replaced with the string value of  mapleader   If  mapleader  is not set or empty  a backslash is used instead    Example       map  lt Leader gt A  oanother line  lt Esc gt  Works like       map  A  oanother line  lt Esc gt  But after       let mapleader       It works like       map  A  oanother line  lt Esc gt   Note that the value of  mapleader  is used at the moment the mapping is defined   Changing  mapleader  after that has no effect for already defined mappings

User · Answer

The  Leader key  is a way of extending the power of VIM s shortcuts by using sequences of keys to perform a command  The default leader key is backslash  Therefore  if you have a map of  lt Leader Q  you can perform that action by typing  Q

User · Answer

Vim s  lt leader gt  key is a way of creating a namespace for commands you want to define  Vim already maps most keys and combinations of Ctrl    some key   so  lt leader gt  some key  is where you  or plugins  can add custom behavior   For example  if you find yourself frequently deleting exactly 3 words and 7 characters  you might find it convenient to map a command via nmap  lt leader gt d 3dw7x so that pressing the leader key followed by d will delete 3 words and 7 characters  Because it uses the leader key as a prefix  you can be  relatively  assured that you re not stomping on any pre-existing behavior   The default key for  lt leader gt  is    but you can use the command  let mapleader       to remap it to another key    in this case    Usevim s page on the leader key has more information

User · Answer

In my system its the   key  it s used for commands so that you can combine it with other chars

[vim] What is the <leader> in a .vimrc file?

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