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Prince Goulash
Prince Goulash

Reputation: 15735

Prevent file saving during BufWritePre

I have a function which performs validity checking on the current file (so as to conform to my employer's coding standards). I would like to call this function before saving, i.e. using BufWritePre. However, I would to prevent saving the file if it fails my checking function.

So, is it possible to break out of the BufWritePre autocommand?

I realise that I could accomplish this by re-mapping the :write command as illustrated here, but I would like to avoid that if at all possible, as it feels somewhat un-subtle.

Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 887

Answers (2)

sehe
sehe

Reputation: 393547

You can 'simply' force an error:

:autocmd BufWritePre *.txt throw "you may not"

If you wanted to be able to save .txt files again

:autocmd!
:source $MYVIMRC

Upvotes: 4

intuited
intuited

Reputation: 24054

From :help BufWriteCmd

                            *BufWriteCmd*
BufWriteCmd         Before writing the whole buffer to a file.
                Should do the writing of the file and reset
                'modified' if successful, unless '+' is in
                'cpo' and writing to another file |cpo-+|.
                The buffer contents should not be changed.
                |Cmd-event|

So it sounds like you could implement that autocommand, and only do the save and reset 'modified' if the save is allowed.

I'm guessing that you'd have to use something like writefile(getline('^', '$')) to actually do the writing.

On the other hand, you might be able to do something like

  • disable your BufWriteCmd autocommand
  • :write the file again. I'm not sure if it will let you do this from within the BufWriteCmd handler.
  • re-enable your BufWriteCmd autocommand. You should probably put this in a :finally clause to ensure that it executes even if there are problems with the write.

Upvotes: 1

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