Vim: map shift-K to open help on current word in a new tab

Question

In conjunction with https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3131393/remapping-help-in-vim-to-open-in-a-new-tab , I'm looking to also make the shift-K shortcut that opens help in a new tab.

I first tried nmap <S-K> :tab help expand("<cword>")<CR>, but it doesn't actually work - the expand is apparently taken literally as the help tag text, and is not executed.

So, how do I remap <S-K> to get help on the current word in a new tab in Vim?

Solution

I'm not sure what you're trying to do. <s-k>, also known as K, opens the man page for the keyword under the cursor. I assume you want to create a mapping to open the vim help page for the keyword under the cursor. This can be done by this (i'll use <c-k> to not override K):

noremap <c-k> :execute "tab h " . expand("<cword>")<cr>

Comments

[Sundar R]

"<s-k>, also known as K, opens the man page" <- This is actually incorrect: it opens whatever the current keywordprg program is, depending on the filetype; its default is man, but the keywordprg automatically changes to :help when in a vimscript file, and can be set to for eg. perldoc -f for filetype perl, to automatically get perldoc help within Perl files when K is pressed.

[Sundar R]

What I wanted was a way to take this whole thing and just add the feature of opening the output in a new tab. Your execute idea did help me make this work just for vim keywords at least, so I'll accept your answer and split the question about making this portable for any value of keywordprg a separate question (since that looks to be a more complicated requirement).

[madmax1]

I see what you are trying to do. You can achieve this with this mapping (i'll use <c-k> again): nnoremap <c-k> :execute 'tabnew <bar> read !' . &keywordprg . ' ' . expand("<cword>")<cr>