file exploring

[jahanbani]

Thank you for sharing your settings. I was wondering what you use for file browsing. Previous versions had nerdtree for this purpose, however, I noticed that you have removed this plugin in the latest version. (Windows 10, fvim) Thank you

[jdhao]

yes, I use nerdtree for some time. I find I rarely use it and it is also slow for large directory, so I removed it. I use leaderf to open a project file, which works great for me.

If you really need a file explorer, nerdtree may not be the best option now, you may try fern.vim, vim-dirvish or other high performance alternatives.

[jahanbani]

Thank you for the response. What's your take on kyazdani42/nvim-tree.lua? Thanks

[jdhao]

Personally, I think cross-platform support (Linux, macOS, Windows) is a must for such file exploring plugins. Features provided are also important: users should be able to do deleting, creating, and other common operations. High performance (in terms of speed) is a plus for such plugins.

I haven't tried it personally. Judging from its documentation, I can see several points:

• platform: macOS, Linux, Windows
• feature: seems complete
• speed: havn't tried, but may be fast due to lua implementation?

[jdhao]

Actually, I have been planning to write a post to summarize all major file explorers for vim or nvim. I haven't finished it yet. Here is what I have got so far. I think you might be interested:

1. nerdtree: https://github.com/preservim/nerdtree

• vim or Neovim: both
• platform: Windows, Linux, macOS
• feature: rich feature with a lot of mappings
• speed: slow for large directory

2. fern.vim

3. vim-dirvish: https://github.com/justinmk/vim-dirvish

• vim or nvim: both
• platform: Windows, Linux, macOS
• feature: not very rich, concise without many decoration
• speed:

4. nvim-tree.lua: https://github.com/kyazdani42/nvim-tree.lua

• vim or nvim: nvim only
• platform: macOS, Linux, Windows
• feature: seems complete
• speed: havn't tried, but may be fast due to lua implementation?

5. tree.nvim: https://github.com/zgpio/tree.nvim

• vim or nvim: nvim
• platform: Linux, macOS (author claims to support Windows, but no install script available)
• feature: medium feature
• speed: haven't tried. written in C++, maybe very fast

6. defx.nvim: https://github.com/Shougo/defx.nvim

• vim or nvim: both
• platform: Linux, macOS and Windows
• feature: very rich
• speed: haven't tried, but may be fast due to python implementation.

[jahanbani]

Thank you very much for your complete response. There is also nvim-clap which you can add to your list :) I will try some of these file explorers. Appreciate your help and thank you for sharing your files :)