Nerdtree: Hide square brackets around flag string?

[eivindml]

Hi,

is there a way, or is it possible to add an option to hide the square brackets around the flag string (e.g. used by the nerdtree-git-plugin)? I think that would look much cleaner.

Relevant code here: https://github.com/scrooloose/nerdtree/blob/509122df20e200b50e887c32cb7d92b19171a4ab/lib/nerdtree/flag_set.vim#L55

[kutsan]

You can achieve that by concealing those characters with conceal. They will be still there unfortunately but conceal will hide them for you. You just won't see them anymore.

augroup nerdtreeconcealbrackets
      autocmd!
      autocmd FileType nerdtree syntax match hideBracketsInNerdTree "\]" contained conceal containedin=ALL
      autocmd FileType nerdtree syntax match hideBracketsInNerdTree "\[" contained conceal containedin=ALL
      autocmd FileType nerdtree setlocal conceallevel=3
      autocmd FileType nerdtree setlocal concealcursor=nvic
augroup END

By the way, if by any chance happen to use vim-devicons plugin in future; that plugin handles those characters for you.

Also, see https://github.com/scrooloose/nerdtree/issues/806 and https://github.com/scrooloose/nerdtree/issues/807 for bonus tips.

[eivindml]

Thank you for this. :)

It did work, but it was a bit buggy. The "+" symbol was a too close. And I would prefer to have a space between the symbol and the title. Maybe to have the icons at the end of the title would be best, so the indentation of files/folders are always the same. Now it can be a bit visually confusing as they get indented differently depending on if they have a icon or not.

Think I will stick with default settings for now. :) But I will check out the great bonus tips.

For others seeing this, remember that default vim shipped with macOS doesn't have the conceal thing, so you need to get a newer vim from homebrew for instance. (I didn't know this at first)

[PhilRunninger]

Changing the conceallevel from 3 to 1 will introduce the space you're looking for. See :h conceallevel.

[eivindml]

thanks. :) Then this happened?

[PhilRunninger]

Or even better than conceallevel=1,

augroup nerdtreeconcealbrackets
      autocmd!
      autocmd FileType nerdtree syntax match hideBracketsInNerdTree "\]" contained conceal containedin=ALL cchar= 
      autocmd FileType nerdtree syntax match hideBracketsInNerdTree "\[" contained conceal containedin=ALL
      autocmd FileType nerdtree setlocal conceallevel=2
      autocmd FileType nerdtree setlocal concealcursor=nvic
augroup END

The cchar= value is a space. conceallevel=2 uses that explicitly defined space to replace the ], and it completely hides the [ because no cchar is specified for that one.

The reason your concealed characters are visible is because your color scheme is not setting the Conceal highlight. You can set it yourself or find another color scheme that does. See https://github.com/pangloss/vim-javascript/issues/151 for a discussion about this issue.

[kutsan]

@eivindml

It did work, but it was a bit buggy. The "+" symbol was a too close. And I would prefer to have a space between the symbol and the title.

You can tweak that by adding a space character after each icon for that plugin. I know I know, it's still hacky solution but that's what we have.

let g:NERDTreeIndicatorMapCustom = {
    \ "Modified"  : "✹ ",
    \ "Staged"    : "✚ ",
    \ "Untracked" : "✭ ",
    \ "Renamed"   : "➜ ",
    \ "Unmerged"  : "═ ",
    \ "Deleted"   : "✖ ",
    \ "Dirty"     : "✗ ",
    \ "Clean"     : "✔︎ ",
    \ 'Ignored'   : '☒ ',
    \ "Unknown"   : "? "
    \ }

Maybe to have the icons at the end of the title would be best, so the indentation of files/folders are always the same.

Yes, I feel you. That's probably why I don't use that plugin. I think it would be better to get rid off all icon stuff and just use highlighting instead of icons; if it's modified, then highlight its foreground color as yellow like other IDEs does.

NERDTree itself is poorly written, so its plugins use some hacks to achieve that kind of functionality.

[PhilRunninger]

@eivindml If you are satisfied with these answers, please close the issue. Thanks!

[eivindml]

Thanks for the help. I also think just highlighting the status with colour would be best.

I use Atom on and off, and how they do it works really well.

Hopefully someone takes up the challenge to create something like this. Will close this issue.

[kutsan]

Back then, I did something with my local nerdtree-git-plugin fork but it was buggy, not usable; and due to vim highlight mechanics, it was slow; we were creating a highlight element every single file node, which is insane when it comes to performance. I don't have any motivation to continue now.

I've been using vim for years and I'd like to say it's not really great experience (at least for me) when you start to make some integration plugins like git.

[eivindml]

Yeah. I can see that. That looks really good though. :)

[aanari]

Since I am also using the syntax highlighting plugin, this did the trick for me:

augroup nerdtree
  autocmd!
  autocmd FileType nerdtree syntax clear NERDTreeFlags
  autocmd FileType nerdtree syntax match hideBracketsInNerdTree "\]" contained conceal containedin=ALL
  autocmd FileType nerdtree syntax match hideBracketsInNerdTree "\[" contained conceal containedin=ALL
  autocmd FileType nerdtree setlocal conceallevel=3
  autocmd FileType nerdtree setlocal concealcursor=nvic
augroup END