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NeoVim Tips

November 13, 2025

• NeoVim

Global find-and-replace in neovim (no lsp)

Use Telescope → quickfix → :cdo when there is no LSP refactoring support (e.g. shell codebases).

1. <leader>fw — open live grep and search for the pattern

2. In Telescope results, <C-q> to send all matches to the quickfix list

   • Or <Tab> to select specific entries, then <M-q> to send only those

3. Run the substitution:

   :cdo s/old/new/g | update
   

   • :cdo runs the command once per match line — only the lines ripgrep found, so other occurrences in the same file are not touched
   • Use :cfdo %s/old/new/g | update instead if you want a whole-file substitution on each matched file (e.g. pattern is already precise enough)
   • | update saves each file after substitution
   • Add the c flag (s/old/new/gc) for per-match confirmation
   • Use \b for whole-word matching: s/\bold\b/new/g

4. :cclose to dismiss the quickfix window

Searching within the current file only

Use :vimgrep with % instead of Telescope:

:vimgrep /pattern/ % | copen

Then proceed with :cdo s/old/new/g | update as above. Note that :cdo/:cfdo require a non-empty quickfix list — always populate it first. copen opens the quickfix list windown. Otherwise it’s not shown.

Inspect a user-created command

:verbose command MasonInstallAll

This shows where the command is installed. It reveals that :MasonInstallAll is defined in NvChad/ui under nvchad/au.lua.

Color palette

When using NvChad, color palette is provided by NvChad/base46.

Themes define the actual RGB hex value of each “abstract color”. Integration maps “abstract colors” to highlight groups of NeoVim and various plugins.

To override highlight group colors, do it in chadrc.lua.

After update, run :lua require("base46").load_all_highlights() to re-compute the color files. Otherwise, colors won’t update even after restarting NeoVim.

:help nvui.base46 shows the NvChad/base46 help page.

lazy.nvim: opts function vs. table when overriding a plugin spec

When overriding a plugin that uses opts = function() return ... end (e.g. NvChad’s nvim-tree spec), the function form is the parent in the metatable chain. lazy.nvim resolves specs recursively from parent to child: the parent’s function is called first to produce a baseline opts table, then the child’s opts are merged on top via deep merge.

The subtlety: if the child spec uses opts = function() return {...} end, the returned table replaces whatever the parent produced (the incoming accumulated opts are passed as an argument but can be ignored). Using a plain opts = {} table in the child avoids this — it always merges on top of the parent’s result.

Practical rule: to extend a plugin’s defaults, use opts = {} in your override spec. Only use the function form if you intentionally want to discard upstream defaults.

Poke at the actual runtime path

:lua vim.tbl_map(print, vim.opt.rtp:get())

We get the following output.

~/.config/nvim
~/.local/share/nvim/lazy/lazy.nvim
~/.local/share/nvim/lazy/conform.nvim
~/.local/share/nvim/lazy/nvim-lspconfig
~/.local/share/nvim/lazy/indent-blankline.nvim
~/.local/share/nvim/lazy/gitsigns.nvim
~/.local/share/nvim/lazy/nvim-autopairs
~/.local/share/nvim/lazy/LuaSnip
~/.local/share/nvim/lazy/friendly-snippets
~/.local/share/nvim/lazy/blink.cmp
~/.local/share/nvim/lazy/nvim-web-devicons
~/.local/share/nvim/lazy/nvim-tree.lua
~/.local/share/nvim/lazy/ui
~/.local/share/nvim/lazy/which-key.nvim
~/.local/share/nvim/lazy/nvim-treesitter
~/.local/share/nvim/lazy/NvChad
/opt/homebrew/Cellar/neovim/0.11.5/share/nvim/runtime
/opt/homebrew/Cellar/neovim/0.11.5/lib/nvim
~/.local/state/nvim/lazy/readme
~/.local/share/nvim/lazy/indent-blankline.nvim/after

lazy.nvim seems to have a special Lua package loader that goes through all folders in the above list and looks at the lua subfolder within. Every require’d Lua modules is from such a lua subfolder.

The order is important.

~/.config/nvim is first, so my configurations always have the highest priority. Then all the ~/.local/share/nvim/lazy/* are plugin folders, each corresponding to the project root of the plugin’s GitHub repo.

/opt/homebrew/Cellar/neovim/0.11.5/share/nvim/runtime and /opt/homebrew/Cellar/neovim/0.11.5/lib/nvim are like the “standard library” of NeoVim.

The rest are some **/after folders that serve a special purpose.