vim: enable folds but don't automatically close them

Question

I really like the folding in Vim, but there are a couple non-file buffers (command-t plugin's window for one) that I really don't want it folding, as the normal fold commands don't work there.

If I could just tell vim to not automatically close folds (only close them when I tell it to) that should fix the problem, but I'm not seeing any options in the vim help for changing that behavior. Is there a way to have folding enabled but not automatically close all folds when a buffer is created/file opened?

Answer 1

The command to have no folds closed when a buffer is opened is

:set foldlevelstart=99

See

:help foldlevelstart

for more.

Answer 2

you can do:

set nofoldenable

for example in my .vimrc I have:

set foldmethod=indent       " automatically fold by indent level
set nofoldenable            " ... but have folds open by default

Answer 3

zR is the command to open all folds. I assume you could use vim's autocommand (au) to just put an option in your .vimrc to issue the command zR when opening a buffer with the file extensions you don't want started up with automatic closing of folds. Something like this:

au BufRead *.myext zR

haven't tested, actually correct syntax may be use exe command for the zR:

au BufRead *.myext exe "zR"

I'm assuming you're talking about autofolding of manually-defined or automatically defined folds when a buffer is opened. If the buffers in questions are not supposed to have folds at all, then it's probably a different issue, something where you want to have folding disabled for those buffer types.