Change Vim swap/backup/undo file name

Question

Is it possible to change the way Vim names its swap/backup/undo files?

To avoid clutter, I\'ve set options in my ~/.vimrc to dump these files in ~/.v

Answer 1

I have this in my .vimrc and it names the swap files with full path names and percent signs just as you describe:

" Store swap files in fixed location, not current directory.
set dir=~/.vimswap//,/var/tmp//,/tmp//,.

The key is the // at the end of the directories. See this note from :help dir:

• For Unix and Win32, if a directory ends in two path separators "//" or "\\", the swap file name will be built from the complete path to the file with all path separators substituted to percent '%' signs. This will ensure file name uniqueness in the preserve directory.