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I'm very very new to Vim. I've been using it for 2 days now (out of the womb new), and I've been having some problems navigating a certain Ruby file of mine without it crashing.

Before I get to the error message, here are the steps I did to reproduce the problem...

  1. First I opened up the file as read-only with the :edit command

  2. If the file has no syntax coloring turn it on :syntax on. (For some reason it doesn't crash without it.)

  3. Navigate up and down the file with j and k (reproduces the crash quicker when you set the cursor in a position where it would scatter the cursor more. For ex, the end of a line)


At first I thought something was wrong with my .rb file, but I was able to reproduce the same crash with the tk.rb file as well which is located in lib\ruby\2.2.0\ folder. It took some more time to do it with tk.rb since the comments in the code make it harder to crash. (I recommend to try it on files with lots of lines like this).

Here's a gif of me reproducing the problem and the file I was navigating through to reproduce the crash...

http://puu.sh/jHXXG/14d2cf6460.gif

http://puu.sh/jHVG2/fdae9e38fa.rar

I'm using Vim 7.4 and windows 10. If any more information is needed please ask in the comments. I would like to know how to resolve this. Vim looks like a really nice program. However, if its gonna break itself and my heart from navigating with hjkl. I might have to travel back to the fork in the road, and walk down the emacs path.

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    I am not an expert in windows, but I would suggest to give Cream a try. Commented Aug 20, 2015 at 11:05
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    Any time vim crashes you should file a bug report. See :help bugs for information on how. Commented Aug 20, 2015 at 12:06
  • I will look into Cream and sending a bug report Commented Aug 20, 2015 at 19:27
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    Sounds like a problem with the new regexp engine. Please try an updated Vim first, before you report the bug to vim_dev. I am pretty sure, it has been fixed already. Commented Aug 20, 2015 at 21:34
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    @izuhu get the source from the source repository (currently, either google code, bitbucket or github) and compile yourself. Alternatively, get an updated binary vim Commented Aug 20, 2015 at 21:51

1 Answer 1

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As it was indicated on the comments, you should open a bug report if the problem is indeed in Vim.

But first you should try the following:

  1. Ensure you are using a version with the latest patches; there were some reports similar to the problem you are describing, and there are chances that it is already solved.
  2. Check if any setting/plugin is triggering the problem, beyond the :syntax. The procedure at Vim-FAQ 2.5 can be helpful. Some relevant parts follows:

2.5. I have a "xyz" (some) problem with Vim. How do I determine it is a problem with my setup or with Vim? / Have I found a bug in Vim?

First, you need to find out, whether the error is in the actual runtime files or any plugin that is distributed with Vim or whether it is a simple side effect of any configuration option from your .vimrc or .gvimrc. So first, start vim like this: 

vim -u NONE -U NONE -N -i NONE

this starts Vim in nocompatible mode (-N), without reading your viminfo file (-i NONE), without reading any configuration file (-u NONE for not reading .vimrc file and -U NONE for not reading a .gvimrc file) or even plugin.

If the error does not occur when starting Vim this way, then the problem is either related to some plugin of yours or some setting in one of your local setup files. You need to find out, what triggers the error, you try starting Vim this way: 

vim -u NONE -U NONE -N

If the error occurs, the problem is your .viminfo file. Simply delete the viminfo file then. If the error does not occur, try: 

vim -u ~/.vimrc --noplugin -N -i NONE

This will simply use your .vimrc as configuration file, but not load any plugins. If the error occurs this time, the error is possibly caused by some configuration option inside your .vimrc file. Depending on the length of your vimrc file, it can be quite hard to trace the origin within that file.

The best way is to add :finish command in the middle of your .vimrc. Then restart again using the same command line. If the error still occurs, the bug must be caused because of a setting in the first half of your .vimrc. If it doesn't happen, the problematic setting must be in the second half of your .vimrc. So move the :finish command to the middle of that half, of which you know that triggers the error and move your way along, until you find the problematic option. If your .vimrc is 350 lines long, you need at a maximum 9 tries to find the offending line (in practise, this can often be further reduced, since often lines depend on each other).

If the problem does not occur, when only loading your .vimrc file, the error must be caused by a plugin or another runtime file (indent autoload or syntax script). Check the output of the :scriptnames command to see what files have been loaded and for each one try to disable each one by one and see which one triggers the bug. Often files that are loaded by vim, have a simple configuration variable to disable them, but you need to check inside each file separately.

  1. If the previous steps doesn't solved the problem you could try checking similar bug reports and try maybe some of the patches which still weren't merged:

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4 Comments

My vim is vanilla. I never made any changes to my .vimrc, nor do I have any plugins. Just to make sure it wasn't my _vimrc I deleted it after I tried all all of this. -> vim -u NONE -U NONE -i NONE , vim -u NONE -U NONE -N, and vim-i ~/.vimrc --noplugin -N -i NONE. And they all crash soon as I turn the syntax coloring on. If I'm lucky it won't crash there, but I will still get the crash when scrolling.
Will give an update when I find out how to apply these patches. Thanks for the reply!
I can't figure out how to apply the patches. However, I installed the Cream version of Vim like @mudsobwa said in the comments and it hasn't crashed on me yet. The only problem is that the installation doesn't install on the PATH so none of the vim command line commands work. I was able however to put it on the path myself manually, but the only thing that doesn't work is vimtutor. When I call vimtutor from my home dir in cmd it just opens then closes. I tried many variations like vimtutor and vimtutor.bat, but I can't seem to open it from home....Anybody know why ?
I can open it from by cd ing to the root folder of vim, but not from home directory. I was able to with the regular installation of vim from their site.

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