In Vim, can I map a key to a command directly, rather than using :foo<CR>?

Question

I have a mapping defined like

noremap <M-n> :tabn<CR>

which works nicely, except in the following scenario: I run :make, I'm waiting while javac is thinking, then I suddenly realize something I should check in another file and try to switch tabs. I cannot do this, since until :make completes I'm still in command mode, and :tabn does not have the desired effect.

Is there any way I can map directly to the action of switching tabs, and not to the keys that would be typed to do so?

Answer 1

:map commands only deal with keyboard input, so if Vim is busy waiting for a command to finish, it's not going to respond to a mapping.

If there's some way to make your :make (!) run in the background, then you'd be fine. But Vim isn't particularly multithreaded.