Disabling swap files creation in vim

Question

Is there a way to disable .swp files creation in vim? or at least create them all in one place so I can find and delete them easily.

I find them especia

Answer 1

You can set backupdir and directory to null in order to completely disable your swap files, but it is generally recommended to simply put them in a centralized directory. Vim takes care of making sure that there aren't name collissions or anything like that; so, this is a completely safe alternative:

set backupdir=~/.vim/backup/
set directory=~/.vim/backup/

Answer 2

If you put set directory="" in your exrc file, you will turn off the swap file. However, doing so will disable recovery.

More info here.

Answer 3

To disable swap files from within vim, type

:set noswapfile

To disable swap files permanently, add the below to your ~/.vimrc file

set noswapfile

For more details see the Vim docs on swapfile

Answer 4

I found the answer here:

vim -n <file>

opens file without swapfile.

In addition:

set dir=/tmp

in .vimrc creates the swapfiles in /tmp.

Answer 5

create no vim swap file just for a particular file

autocmd bufenter  c:/aaa/Dropbox/TapNote/Todo.txt :set noswapfile

Answer 6

I agree with those who question why vim needs all this 'disaster recovery' stuff when no other text editors bother with it. I don't want vim creating ANY extra files in the edited file's directory when I'm editing it, thank you very much. To that end, I have this in my _vimrc to disable swap files, and move irritating 'backup' files to the Temp dir:

" Uncomment below to prevent 'tilde backup files' (eg. myfile.txt~) from being created
"set nobackup

" Uncomment below to cause 'tilde backup files' to be created in a different dir so as not to clutter up the current file's directory (probably a better idea than disabling them altogether)
set backupdir=C:\Windows\Temp

" Uncomment below to disable 'swap files' (eg. .myfile.txt.swp) from being created
set noswapfile