If you have a nerdtree file navigation window on the left of the current buffer and use :bd¹, you will find that the nerdtree window will occupy the whole window. When you open another buffer, you have to manually resize the nerdtree window to a smaller size, which is super annoying.

How to prevent this behaviour?

An easy way is to switch to another buffer first, and then delete the previous buffer. We can create a shortcut for this:

nnoremap \d :bp<cr>:bd #<cr>

In the above command, :bp stands for :bprevious, which will change the buffer to the previous buffer. # after the :bd command represents the last used buffer, i.e., the buffer we want to delete.

There is also a Nvim plugin called vim-bufkill, which specifically address this issue. After installing this plugin, you can use :BD to delete the current buffer without closing the window.

References#

• https://github.com/carlhuda/janus/issues/71
• https://www.johnplummer.com/tools/macvim-nerdtree-janus-annoyances.html
• https://github.com/scrooloose/nerdtree/issues/400
• https://github.com/vim-airline/vim-airline/issues/460
• https://superuser.com/questions/1131952/vim-close-buffer-not-quite-vim
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1864394/vim-and-nerd-tree-closing-a-buffer-properly/
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4465095/vim-delete-buffer-without-losing-the-split-window