dterc
dterc is the language used in dte
configuration files
(~/.dte/rc
) and also in the command mode of the editor (Alt+x). The
syntax of the language is quite similar to shell, but much simpler.
Commands are separated either by a newline or ;
character. To make a command span multiple lines in an rc file, escape
the newline (put \
at the end of the line).
Rc files can contain comments at the start of a line. Comments begin
with a #
character and can be indented, but they can't be
put on the same line as a command.
Commands can contain environment variables. Variables always expand into a single argument even if they contain whitespace. Variables inside single or double quotes are NOT expanded. This makes it possible to bind keys to commands that contain variables (inside single or double quotes), which will be expanded just before the command is executed.
Example:
alias x "exec -s chmod 755 $FILE"
$FILE
is expanded when the alias x is executed.
The command works even if $FILE
contains whitespace.
Special variables
These variables are always defined and override environment variables of the same name.
$FILE
The absolute filename of the current buffer (or an empty string if unsaved).
$RFILE
The relative filename of the current buffer (or an empty string if unsaved).
$FILEDIR
The directory part of $FILE
.
$RFILEDIR
The directory part of $RFILE
, or .
.
$FILETYPE
The value of the filetype
option
for the current buffer.
$LINENO
The line number of the cursor in the current buffer.
$COLNO
The column number of the cursor in the current buffer.
$WORD
The selected text or the word under the cursor.
$DTE_HOME
The user configuration directory. This is either the value of $DTE_HOME
when the editor
first started, or the default value ($HOME/.dte
).
Single quoted strings
Single quoted strings can't contain single quotes or escaped characters.
Double quoted strings
Double quoted strings may contain the following escapes:
\a
,\b
,\t
,\n
,\v
,\f
,\r
- Control characters (same as in C)
\e
- Escape character
\\
- Backslash
\"
- Double quote
\x0a
-
Hexadecimal byte value 0x0A (note that
\x00
is not supported, because strings are null-terminated) \u20ac
- Four hex digit Unicode code point U+20AC
\U000020ac
- Eight hex digit Unicode code point U+20AC
Commands
Configuration Commands
Configuration commands are used to customize certain aspects of the editor, for example adding key bindings, setting options, etc. These are the only commands allowed in user configuration files.
alias name [command]
Create an alias name for command. If no command is given then any existing alias for name is removed.
Aliases can be used in command mode or bound to keys, just as normal commands can. When aliases are used in place of commands, they are first recursively expanded (to allow aliases of aliases) and any additional arguments are then added to the end of the expanded command.
For example, if the following alias is created:
alias read 'pipe-from cat'
this can then be invoked as e.g. read file.txt
, which
will expand to pipe-from cat file.txt
and thus cause file.txt
to be inserted into the current
buffer.
bind [-cns] key [command]
Bind command to key. If no command is given then any existing binding for key is removed.
Special keys:
left
right
up
down
insert
delete
home
end
pgup
pgdown
escape
backspace
enter
tab
space
begin
(keypad "5" with Num Lock off)F1
..F20
Modifiers:
- Ctrl:
-
C-x
(or^X
) - Alt:
-
M-x
- Shift:
-
S-left
- Super:
-
s-left
- Hyper:
-
H-left
The key is bound in normal mode by default, unless one or more of the following flags are used:
-c
- Add binding for command mode
-n
- Add binding for normal mode
-s
- Add binding for search mode
The commands available in normal mode are the ones listed in the main sections of this manual.
The commands available in command/search mode are as follows:
left
right
word-bwd
word-fwd
bol
eol
delete
delete-word
delete-eol
erase
erase-word
erase-bol
clear
copy
[-bip]paste
[-m]toggle
[-g] option [values]...accept
[-eH] - Execute command or perform searchcancel
- Return to normal modehistory-next
[-S] - Find next history item matching current prefixhistory-prev
[-S] - Find previous history item matching current prefixcomplete-next
- Select next auto-completion in command modecomplete-prev
- Select previous auto-completion in command modedirection
- Toggle search direction in search mode
Most of these commands behave in a similar fashion to the normal mode commands of the same name. The exceptions to this have been given a short description above. Most of the command flags also behave similarly to the normal mode equivalents, except for the following:
accept -H
- Accept the current text without adding a history entryaccept -e
(search mode only) - Escape allregex
special characters, before performing a (plain-text) searchhistory-next -S
- Get next history item (without prefix matching)history-prev -S
- Get previous history item (without prefix matching)
Note that, due to the use of several input protocols, some key
combinations may correspond to slightly different key strings,
depending on which terminal is in use. To see the appropriate
key string for a specific key combination, start the editor in
dte -K
mode. In some cases
this may mean that the same key binding has to be added in 2 different
forms (e.g. C-S-1
and C-S-!
) and in other
cases it may mean certain keys cannot be bound at all. Terminals that
support Kitty's
keyboard protocol should be preferred (if possible), for maximum
functionality.
See also:
- The key bindings section in the
dte
man page - The
-K
option in thedte
man page - The
show bind
command (below) - Kitty's keyboard protocol documentation (if seeking technical details)
set [-gl] option [value] ...
Set value for option. Value can be omitted for boolean option to set it true. Multiple options can be set at once but then value must be given for every option.
There are three kinds of options.
Global options.
Local options. These are file specific options. Each open file has its own copies of the option values.
Options that have both global and local values. The Global value is just a default local value for opened files and is never used for anything else. Changing the global value does not affect any already opened files.
By default set
changes both global and local values.
-g
- Change only global option value
-l
- Change only local option value of current file
In configuration
files only global options can be set (no need to specify the
-g
flag).
See also: toggle
and option
commands.
setenv name [value]
Set (or unset) environment variable.
hi [-c] [name] [fg-color [bg-color]] [attribute]...
Set highlight color.
The name argument can be a token name defined by a
dte-syntax
file or one of the following, built-in highlight
names:
default
nontext
noline
wserror
selection
currentline
linenumber
statusline
commandline
errormsg
infomsg
tabbar
activetab
inactivetab
dialog
The fg-color and bg-color arguments can be one of the following:
- No value (equivalent to
default
) - A numeric value between
-2
and255
- A 256-color palette value in R/G/B notation (e.g.
0/3/5
) - A true color value in #RRGGBB notation (e.g.
#ab90df
) - A true color value in #RGB notation (e.g.
#1ef
) keep
(-2
)default
(-1
)black
(0
)red
(1
)green
(2
)yellow
(3
)blue
(4
)magenta
(5
)cyan
(6
)gray
(7
)darkgray
(8
)lightred
(9
)lightgreen
(10
)lightyellow
(11
)lightblue
(12
)lightmagenta
(13
)lightcyan
(14
)white
(15
)
Colors 16
to 231
correspond to R/G/B colors
and 232
to 255
are grayscale values (see https://www.ditig.com/publications/256-colors-cheat-sheet
for more details).
If the terminal has limited support for rendering colors, the
fg-color and bg-color arguments will fall back to the
nearest supported color (unless the -c
flag is used; see
below).
The attribute argument(s) can be any combination of the following:
bold
dim
italic
underline
strikethrough
blink
reverse
invisible
keep
The color and attribute value keep
is useful in selected
text to keep fg-color and attributes and change only
bg-color.
NOTE: Because keep
is both a color and an attribute you
need to specify both fg-color and bg-color if you want
to set the keep
attribute.
Unset fg/bg colors are inherited from highlight color
default
. If you don't set fg/bg for the highlight color
default
then terminal's default fg/bg is used.
If hi
is run without any arguments, all highlight colors
are removed and a baseline set of defaults is then loaded (as if by
running include -b
on the built-in
color/reset
config).
-c
- Do nothing at all if the terminal can't display fg-color and/or bg-color with full precision (this can be used to set up tiered color schemes that use the best supported colors automatically)
ft [-b|-c|-f|-i] filetype string...
Add a filetype association. Filetypes are used to determine which syntax highlighter and local options to use when opening files.
By default string is interpreted as one or more filename extensions.
-b
- Interpret string as a file basename
-c
-
Interpret string as a
regex
pattern and match against the contents of the first line of the file -f
-
Interpret string as a
regex
pattern and match against the full (absolute) filename -i
- Interpret string as a command interpreter name and match against the Unix shebang line (after removing any path prefix and/or version suffix)
Examples:
ft c c h
ft -b make Makefile GNUmakefile
ft -c xml '<\?xml'
ft -f mail '/tmpmsg-.*\.txt$'
ft -i lua lua luajit
See also:
- The
option
command (below) - The
filetype
option (below) - The
dte-syntax
man page
option [-r] filetype option value...
Add automatic option for filetype (as previously
registered with the ft
command).
Automatic options are set when files are are opened.
-r
-
Interpret filetype argument as a
regex
pattern instead of a filetype and match against full filenames
include [-bq] file
Read and execute commands from file.
-b
- Read built-in file instead of reading from the filesystem
-q
- Don't show an error message if file doesn't exist
Note: "built-in files" are config files bundled into the program
binary. See the -B
and -b
flags in the dte
man page and the show include
command for more
information.
errorfmt [-i] compiler [regexp] [file|line|column|message|_]...
Register a regex
pattern, for later use with the compile
command.
When the compile
command is invoked with a specific
compiler name, the regexp pattern(s) previously
registered with that name are used to parse messages from it's program
output.
The regexp pattern should contain as many capture groups as
there are extra arguments. These capture groups are used to parse the
file, line, message, etc. from the output and, if possible, jump to the
corresponding file position. To use parentheses in regexp but
ignore the capture, use _
as the extra argument.
Running errorfmt
multiple times with the same
compiler name appends each regexp to a list. When
running compile
, the entries in the specified list are
checked for a match in the same order they were added.
If only 1 argument (i.e. compiler) is given, all patterns previously added for that compiler name will be removed.
For a basic example of usage, see the output of
dte -b compiler/go
.
-i
- Ignore this error
Editor Commands
quit [-f|-p] [-CSFH] [exitcode]
Quit the editor.
The exit status of the process is set to exitcode, which can
be in the range 0
..125
, or defaults to
0
if unspecified.
-f
- Force quit, even if there are unsaved files
-p
- Prompt for confirmation if there are unsaved files
-C
-
Don't write
command
history file -S
-
Don't write
search
history file -F
- Don't write file history file
-H
-
Don't write any history files (equivalent to
-CSF
)
See also:
- The
dte
-H
flag - The
file-history
option
suspend
Suspend the editor (run fg
in the shell to resume).
cd directory
Change the working directory and update $PWD
and
$OLDPWD
. Running cd -
changes to the previous
directory ($OLDPWD
).
command [text]
Enter command mode. If
text is given then it is written to the command line (see the
default ^L
key binding for why this is useful).
refresh
Trigger a full redraw of the screen.
Buffer Management Commands
open [-g|-t] [-e encoding] [filename]...
Open file. If filename is omitted, a new file is opened.
-e
encoding-
Set file encoding (see
iconv -l
for list of supported encodings) -g
-
Perform
glob
expansion on filename -t
- Mark buffer as "temporary" (always closeable, without warnings for "unsaved changes")
save [-fp] [-d|-u] [-b|-B] [-e encoding] [filename]
Save current buffer.
-b
- Write byte order mark (BOM)
-B
- Don't write byte order mark
-d
- Save with DOS/CRLF line-endings
-f
- Force saving read-only file
-u
- Save with Unix/LF line-endings
-p
- Open a command prompt if there's no specified or existing filename
-e
encoding-
Set file encoding (see
iconv -l
for list of supported encodings)
See also: newline
and utf8-bom
global options
close [-qw] [-f|-p]
Close file.
-f
- Force close file, even if it has unsaved changes
-p
- Prompt for confirmation if the file has unsaved changes
-q
- Quit if closing the last open file
-w
- Close parent window if closing its last contained file
next
Display next file.
prev
Display previous file.
view N|last
Display Nth or last open file.
move-tab N|left|right
Move current tab to position N or 1 position left or right.
Window Management Commands
wsplit [-bghr] [-n|-t|filename...]
Split the current window.
filename arguments will be opened in a manner similar to the
open
command. If there are no
filename arguments, the contents of the new window will be an
additional view of the current buffer.
-b
- Add new window before current instead of after
-g
-
Perform
glob
expansion on filename -h
- Split horizontally instead of vertically
-n
- Create a new, empty buffer
-r
- Split root instead of current window
-t
- Create a new, empty buffer and mark it as "temporary" (always closeable, without warnings for "unsaved changes")
wclose [-f|-p]
Close window.
-f
- Force close window, even if it contains unsaved files
-p
- Prompt for confirmation if there are unsaved files in the window
wnext
Next window.
wprev
Previous window.
wresize [-h|-v] [N|+N|-- -N]
If no parameter given, equalize window sizes in current frame.
-h
- Resize horizontally
-v
- Resize vertically
- N
- Set size of current window to N columns/rows
+
N- Increase size of current window by N columns/rows
-
N-
Decrease size of current window by N columns/rows (use
--
to prevent the minus symbol being parsed as an option flag, e.g.wresize -- -5
)
wflip
Change from vertical layout to horizontal and vice versa.
wswap
Swap positions of this and next frame.
Movement Commands
Movement commands are used to move the cursor position.
Several of these commands also have -c
and
-l
flags to allow creating character/line selections. These
2 flags are noted in the command summaries below, but are only described
once, as follows:
-c
- Select characters
-l
- Select whole lines
left [-c|-l]
Move one column left.
right [-c|-l]
Move one column right.
up [-c|-l]
Move one line up.
down [-c|-l]
Move one line down.
pgup [-c|-l]
Move one page up.
pgdown [-c|-l]
Move one page down.
blkup [-c|-l]
Move one block up.
Note: a "block", in this context, is somewhat akin to a paragraph. Blocks are delimited by one or more blank lines
blkdown [-c|-l]
Move one block down.
word-fwd [-c|-l] [-s]
Move forward one word.
-s
- Skip special characters
word-bwd [-c|-l] [-s]
Move backward one word.
-s
- Skip special characters
bol [-c|-l] [-s|-t]
Move to beginning of current line.
-s
- Move to beginning of indented text or beginning of line, depending on current cursor position
-t
-
Like
-s
, but with the additional behavior of moving back and forth between the two positions
eol [-c|-l]
Move to end of current line.
bof [-c|-l]
Move to beginning of file.
eof [-c|-l]
Move to end of file.
bolsf [-c|-l]
Incrementally move to beginning of line, then beginning of screen, then beginning of file.
eolsf [-c|-l]
Incrementally move to end of line, then end of screen, then end of file.
scroll-up
Scroll view up one line. Keeps cursor position unchanged if possible.
scroll-down
Scroll view down one line. Keeps cursor position unchanged if possible.
scroll-pgup
Scroll one page up. Cursor position relative to top of screen is
maintained. See also pgup
.
scroll-pgdown
Scroll one page down. Cursor position relative to top of screen is
maintained. See also pgdown
.
center-view
Center view to cursor.
match-bracket [-c|-l]
Move to the bracket character paired with the one under the cursor.
The character under the cursor should be one of
{}[]()<>
.
search [-Her] [-n|-p|-w|pattern]
If no flags (or just -r
and no pattern) are
given then dte changes to search
mode, where you can type a regular
expression to search.
-H
- Don't add pattern to search history
-e
-
Escape
regex
special characters in pattern, so that the search becomes effectively "plain text" -r
- Start searching backwards
-n
- Search next
-p
- Search previous
-w
- Search word under cursor
line
[-c|-l]
lineno[,
colno]
Move the cursor to the line number specified by lineno and
(optionally) the column number specified by colno. The
delimiter between the two numbers can either be a comma (,
)
or a colon (:
).
Examples:
line 19
line 20,15
line 20:15
bookmark [-r]
Save the current file/cursor location to a stack.
-r
- Jump back to the previous location (and pop it off the stack)
tag [-r|tag]
Save the current file/cursor location to a stack and jump to the
location of tag. If the tag argument is not given, the
word under the cursor is used instead (unless -r
is
used).
The location for tag is determined by parsing a tags
file (as generated by ctags
) from
the current directory, or any of its parent directories.
-r
- Jump back to the previous location (and pop it off the stack)
Note: the saving of the cursor location described above is much the
same as running bookmark
and
tag -r
is identical to bookmark -r
.
See also: msg
command.
msg [-n|-p|number]
Display and/or navigate messages, as generated by the compile
and tag
commands. If the activated message has
an associated file location, the file will be opened and the cursor
moved to the appropriate position.
Messages are displayed in the bottom row of the screen (i.e. the command
line) and thus truncated to the
width of the terminal. The show msg
command can be used to display a numbered list of messages, without any
truncation and with the cursor placed on the current message.
If this command is used without flags or arguments (e.g. as
msg
) the current message will be re-displayed, which can be
useful after other input clears it.
-n
- Next message
-p
- Previous message
Editing Commands
cut
Cut current line or selection.
copy [-bikp]
Copy current line or selection.
-b
- Copy to system clipboard
-i
- Copy to internal copy buffer (this is the default, if no -bip flags are used)
-k
- Keep selection (by default, selections are lost after copying)
-p
- Copy to system "primary selection"
Note that the -b and -p flags depend upon the terminal supporting "OSC 52" escape sequences. If the terminal lacks this support, these flags will simply do nothing. OSC 52 sends data over the wire, so it can be used over SSH and still work as expected, unlike most other methods of copying to the system clipboard.
The -i, -b and -p flags can be used together, to allow copying to multiple targets in a single command. For example:
copy -ib
paste [-m] [-a|-c]
Insert text previously copied by the copy
or cut
commands.
If the text to be inserted was copied from a whole-line selection
(e.g. down -l; copy
) or as a whole, single line (e.g.
unselect; copy
) the default behaviour is to insert the text
at the start of the line below the cursor.
-a
- Paste above the cursor (instead of below), if pasting whole lines
-c
- Always paste directly at the cursor position, even when pasting whole lines (instead of below/above the cursor)
-m
- Move after the pasted text
undo [-m]
Undo latest change.
-m
- Move to the change location, without undoing it
redo [choice]
Redo changes done by the undo
command. If there are multiple possibilities a message is displayed:
Redoing newest (2) of 2 possible changes.
If the change was not the one you wanted, just run undo
and then, for example, redo 1
.
clear
Clear current line.
-i
-
Do not
auto-indent
the line after clearing
join [delimiter]
Join selection or next line to current using delimiter. If delimiter is not provided, a space is used.
new-line [-a]
Insert empty line below current line.
-a
- Insert above current line, instead of below
delete
Delete character after cursor (or selection).
erase
Delete character before cursor (or selection).
delete-eol [-n]
Delete to end of line.
-n
- Delete newline if cursor is at end of line
erase-bol
Erase to beginning of line.
delete-word [-s]
Delete word after cursor.
-s
- Be more "aggressive"
erase-word [-s]
Erase word before cursor.
-s
- Be more "aggressive"
delete-line [-S]
Delete whole lines touched by the selection, or the current line.
-S
- If there's a character-wise selection, only delete the selected characters (instead of treating it like a line selection)
case [-l|-u]
Change text case. The default is to change lower case to upper case and vice versa.
-l
- Lower case
-u
- Upper case
insert [-k|-m] text
Insert text into the buffer.
-k
- Insert one character at a time, as if manually typed (normally text is inserted exactly as specified, but this option allows it to be affected by special input handling like auto-indents, whitespace trimming, line-by-line undo, etc.)
-m
- Move after inserted text
replace [-bcegi] pattern [replacement]
Replace all instances of text matching pattern with the replacement text. Matching is confined to the current selection, if there is one.
The pattern argument is a POSIX extended regex
.
The replacement argument is treated like a template and may contain several, special substitutions:
- Backslash sequences
\1
through\9
are replaced by sub-strings that were "captured" (via parentheses) in the pattern. - The special character
&
is replaced by the full string that was matched by pattern. - Literal
\
and&
characters can be inserted in replacement by escaping them (as\\
and\&
). - All other characters in replacement represent themselves.
Note: extra care must be taken when using double quotes for the pattern argument, since double quoted arguments have their own (higher precedence) backslash sequences.
-b
- Use basic (instead of extended) regex syntax
-c
- Ask for confirmation before each replacement
-e
-
Escape
regex
special characters in pattern, so that it's matched literally (i.e. as "plain text") -g
- Replace all matches for each line (instead of just the first)
-i
- Ignore case
Examples:
replace ^ #
replace 'Hello World' '& (Hallo Welt)'
replace "[ \t]+$" ''
replace -cg '([^ ]+) +([^ ]+)' '\2 \1'
shift count
Shift current or selected lines by count indentation levels.
Count is usually -1
(decrease indent) or 1
(increase indent).
To specify a negative number, it's necessary to first disable option
parsing with --
, e.g. shift -- -1
.
wrap-paragraph [width]
Format the current selection or paragraph under the cursor. If
paragraph width is not given then the text-width
option is used.
This command merges the selection into one paragraph. To format
multiple paragraphs use the external fmt
program with the
filter
command, e.g.
filter fmt -w 60
.
macro action
Record and replay command macros.
The action argument can be one of:
record
- Begin recording
stop
- Stop recording
toggle
- Toggle recording on/off
cancel
- Stop recording, without overwriting the previous macro
play
- Replay the previously recorded macro
Once a macro has been recorded, it can be viewed in text form by
running show macro
.
select [-kl]
Enter selection mode. All basic movement commands while in this mode
extend the selected area, until either the unselect
command is used (e.g. by
pressing Esc
) or some other operation (e.g. delete
, insert
, etc.) clears the selection.
Note: A better way to create selections is to hold the Shift key
while moving the cursor. The select
command exists mostly
as a fallback, for terminals with limited key binding support.
-k
- Keep existing selections
-l
- Select whole lines
unselect
Cancel selection.
External Commands
exec [-pstmn] [-ioe action]... command [argument]...
Execute external command, with custom actions for standard
streams. The -i
, -o
and -e
options represent standard input, output and error respectively and each
one can be given a specific action, as described below.
The following action arguments are supported by all -ioe options:
null
- redirect to/dev/null
tty
- redirect to controlling terminal (default action)
Actions for stdin (-i
):
buffer
- pipe selected text or whole buffer (to command)line
- pipe selected text or current lineword
- pipe selected text or current wordcommand
- pipe command historysearch
- pipe search historymsg
- pipe list of numbered messages (seemsg
command)
Actions for stdout (-o
):
buffer
-insert
output (from command) into buffereval
- execute output as dterc commandsmsg
- runmsg
command with numerical argument parsed from first line of outputopen
- runopen
command with each line of output as an argumenttag
- runtag
command with first line of output as an argument
Actions for stderr (-e
):
errmsg
- if command exits non-zero, display first line of stderr output as an error message
-i
action- Specify standard input action
-o
action- Specify standard output action
-e
action- Specify standard error action
-p
- Display "press any key to continue" prompt
-s
-
Don't yield terminal control to child processes and transparently
convert
tty
actions tonull
(use this to avoid screen flicker when command doesn't need terminal access) -t
-
Cancel the effects of
-s
(last one wins) -m
- Move cursor after inserted text (if any)
-n
- Strip newline from end of inserted text (if any)
For convenience, there are several built-in aliases to simplify
common uses of exec
:
alias filter 'exec -s -i buffer -o buffer -e errmsg'
alias pipe-from 'exec -s -o buffer -e errmsg'
alias pipe-to 'exec -s -i buffer -e errmsg'
alias run 'exec'
alias eval 'exec -o eval'
alias exec-open 'exec -o open'
alias exec-tag 'exec -o tag'
alias exec-msg 'exec -o msg -i msg'
Examples:
filter sort -r
filter sh -c 'tr a-z A-Z | sed s/foo/bar/'
pipe-to xsel -b
exec-open -s find . -type f -name *.h
exec-open -s git ls-files --modified
exec-open fzf -m --reverse
exec-tag -s echo main
exec-tag sh -c 'readtags -l | cut -f1 | sort | uniq | fzf --reverse'
When passing the buffer through a filter
command, the
cursor is moved to line 1 and the whole contents is replaced with the
output. It may be useful to save and restore the cursor position, in
cases where line numbers remain mostly unchanged. This can be done by
wrapping the command with bookmark
and bookmark -r
, e.g.:
bookmark; filter expand --tabs=4; bookmark -r
Note that command is executed directly using execvp
.
To use shell features like pipes or redirection, use a shell interpreter
as the command (see second example above). If complex commands
become difficult to read (e.g. due to nested/escaped quotes), it's
recommended to create external
scripts and execute those instead.
compile [-1ps] errorfmt command [argument]...
Run external command and collect output messages. This can be used to run e.g. compilers, build systems, code search utilities, etc. and then jump to a file/line position for each message.
The errorfmt argument corresponds to a regex capture pattern
previously specified by the errorfmt
command. After
command exits successfully, parsed messages can be navigated
using the msg
command.
-1
- Read error messages from stdout instead of stderr
-p
- Display "Press any key to continue" prompt
-s
- Don't echo command output to the terminal during execution; just silently collect messages (use this to avoid screen flicker, e.g. for commands that typically complete quickly)
See also: errorfmt
and msg
commands.
Other Commands
repeat count command [argument]...
Run command count times.
toggle [-gv] option [values]...
Toggle option. If list of values is not given then the option must be either boolean or enum.
-g
- toggle global option instead of local
-v
- display new value
If option has both local and global values then local is
toggled unless -g
is used.
show [-c] type [key]
Display current values for various configurable types.
The type argument can be one of:
alias
- Show command aliases
bind
- Show key bindings
color
- Show highlight colors
command
- Show command history
env
- Show environment variables
errorfmt
- Show compiler error formats
ft
- Show filetype associations
hi
- Show highlight colors
include
- Show built-in configs
macro
- Show last recorded macro
msg
- Show messages
option
-
Show option values and automatic
option
entries search
- Show search history
set
- Show option values
setenv
-
Show environment variables, in terms of the
setenv
command wsplit
- Show window dimensions
The key argument is the name of the entry to look up (e.g. the alias name). If this argument is omitted, the full list of entries of the specified type will be displayed in a new buffer.
Note: the majority of type arguments correspond to a command of the same name and some type arguments don't take any key argument.
-c
-
write output to the command line (for most type arguments) or
to the current buffer (when type is
errorfmt
orinclude
)
Options
Options can be changed using the set
command. Enumerated options can also be toggle
d. To see which options are
enumerated, type "toggle " in command
mode and press the tab key. You can also use the option
command to set default options
for specific file types.
Global options
case-sensitive-search [true]
false
- Search is case-insensitive
true
- Search is case-sensitive
auto
- If search string contains an uppercase letter search is case-sensitive, otherwise it is case-insensitive
display-special [false]
Display special characters.
esc-timeout [100] 0...2000
When single escape is read from the terminal dte waits some time before treating the escape as a single keypress. The timeout value is in milliseconds.
Too long timeout makes escape key feel slow and too small timeout can cause escape sequences of for example arrow keys to be split and treated as multiple key presses.
filesize-limit [250]
Refuse to open any file with a size larger than this value (in mebibytes). Useful to prevent accidentally opening very large files, which can take a long time on some systems.
lock-files [true]
Keep a record of open files, so that a warning can be shown if the same file is accidentally opened in multiple dte processes.
See also: the FILES
section in the dte
man page.
newline [unix]
Whether to use LF (unix) or CRLF (dos) line-endings in newly created files.
Note: buffers opened from existing files will have their newline type detected automatically.
optimize-true-color [true]
If set to true
, this option will cause the hi
command to automatically replace 24-bit
#RRGGBB colors with palette colors 16-255, but only if there's an exact
color match among the default, extended palette colors.
This allows defining color schemes in #RRGGBB notation while still sending the shortest possible escape sequence to the terminal.
Note: this optimization only works if the terminal has not been
configured with custom values for colors 16-255. If you have changed
these extended palette colors, you should set this option to
false
.
select-cursor-char [true]
Whether to include the character under the cursor in selections.
scroll-margin [0]
Minimum number of lines to keep visible before and after cursor.
set-window-title [false]
Set the window title to the filename of the current buffer (if the terminal supports it).
show-line-numbers [false]
Show line numbers.
statusline-left [" %f%s%m%s%r%s%M"]
Format string for the left aligned part of status line.
%f
- Filename
%m
-
Prints
*
if file has been modified since last save %r
-
Prints
RO
for read-only buffers orTMP
for temporary buffers %y
- Cursor row
%Y
- Total rows in file
%x
- Cursor display column
%X
-
Cursor column as characters (if this differs from cursor display column
then both are shown, as e.g.
2-9
) %p
- Position in percentage
%E
- File encoding
%b
-
Prints
BOM
if file has a byte order mark %M
- Miscellaneous status information
%n
-
Line-ending (
LF
orCRLF
) %N
-
Line-ending (only if
CRLF
) %s
- Separator (a single space, unless the preceding format character expanded to an empty string)
%S
-
Like
%s
, but 3 spaces instead of 1 %t
- File type
%u
- Hexadecimal Unicode value value of character under cursor
%o
-
Prints
OVR
orINS
foroverwrite
mode on or off respectively %%
-
Literal
%
statusline-right [" %y,%X %u %o %E%s%b%s%n %t %p "]
Format string for the right aligned part of status line.
tab-bar [true]
Whether to show the tab-bar at the top of each window.
utf8-bom [false]
Whether to write a byte order mark (BOM) in newly created UTF-8 files.
Note: buffers opened from existing UTF-8 files will have their BOM
(or lack thereof) preserved as it was, unless overridden by the save
command.
Local options
brace-indent [false]
Scan for {
and }
characters when
calculating indentation size. Depends on the auto-indent
option.
filetype [none]
Type of file. Value must be previously registered using the ft
command.
indent-regex [""]
If this regex
pattern matches the current line when enter is pressed and auto-indent
is true then
indentation is increased. Set to ""
to disable.
Local and global options
The global values for these options serve as the default values for local (per-file) options.
auto-indent [true]
Automatically insert indentation when pressing enter. Indentation is
copied from previous non-empty line. If also the indent-regex
local option is set
then indentation is automatically increased if the regular expression
matches current line.
detect-indent [""]
Comma-separated list of indent widths (1
-8
)
to detect automatically when a file is opened. Set to ""
to
disable. Tab indentation is detected if the value is not
""
. Adjusts the following options if indentation style is
detected: emulate-tab
, expand-tab
, indent-width
.
Example:
set detect-indent 2,3,4,8
emulate-tab [false]
Make delete
, erase
and moving left
and right
inside indentation feel as if there
were tabs instead of spaces.
expand-tab [false]
Convert tab to spaces on insert.
file-history [true]
Save and restore cursor positions for previously opened files.
See also: the FILES
section in the dte
man page.
indent-width [8]
Size of indentation in spaces.
overwrite [false]
If set to true
, typing will overwrite existing
characters within current line instead of inserting before them.
syntax [true]
Use syntax highlighting.
tab-width [8]
Width of tab. Recommended value is 8
. If you use other
indentation size than 8
you should use spaces to
indent.
text-width [72]
Preferred width of text. Used as the default argument for the wrap-paragraph
command.
ws-error [special]
Comma-separated list of flags that describe which whitespace errors
should be highlighted. Set to ""
to disable.
auto-indent
-
If the
expand-tab
option is enabled then this is the same astab-after-indent,tab-indent
. Otherwise it's the same asspace-indent
. space-align
- Highlight spaces used for alignment after tab indents as errors.
space-indent
-
Highlight space indents as errors. Note that this still allows using
less than
tab-width
spaces at the end of indentation for alignment. tab-after-indent
- Highlight tabs used anywhere other than indentation as errors.
tab-indent
- Highlight tabs in indentation as errors. If you set this you most likely want to set "tab-after-indent" too.
special
- Display all characters that look like regular space as errors. One of these characters is no-break space (U+00A0), which is often accidentally typed (AltGr+space in some keyboard layouts).
trailing
- Highlight trailing whitespace characters at the end of lines as errors.