Can I add a set of words to the Vim autocomplete vocabulary?

Question

In Vim, I'm aware of using CTRL-n and CTRL-p to autocomplete words found in the document. This is great for promoting the use of descriptive method and variable names.

I would like to add a set of words to autocomplete that I often but are not in the source file I'm currently editing. My current solution is to just add the list of words to a comment at the bottom of my template file, but that seems a bit wasteful and kludgey at best.

Is there a way to add words to Vim's autocomplete vocabulary that would be accessible to every Vim session?

Answer 1

You can use abbreviations in your ~/.vimrc file for just a couple of words:

:abbr supe superuser
:abbr autoc autocomplete
:abbr que question

These will auto-complete after pressing Space or Enter. So if you typed que then pressed Space or Enter it would finish the word "question" for you.

If you are adding a lot and want this interface:

You can use dictionaries. Simply set up a file with a word on each line, then in your .vimrc add a line like this:

set dictionary+=/home/john/dict.txt

Replace the path with your dictionary file's location. You can then use Ctrl + x and Ctrl + k to bring up the suggestions. Ctrl + n and Ctrl + p to select the next/previous out of multiple selections.