plenary.nvim

---

Important Notice

This repository is no longer actively maintained and will be officially archived soon.

• Critical bugs may still be addressed until 2026-06-30
• No new features will be added
• Ongoing support should not be expected

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All the lua functions I don't want to write twice.

plenary:

full; complete; entire; absolute; unqualified.

Note that this library is useless outside of Neovim since it requires Neovim functions. It should be usable with any recent version of Neovim though.

At the moment, it is very much in pre-alpha :smile: Expect changes to the way some functions are structured. I'm hoping to finish some document generators to provide better documentation for people to use and consume and then at some point we'll stabilize on a few more stable APIs.

Installation

Using plug:

Plug 'nvim-lua/plenary.nvim'

Using packer:

use "nvim-lua/plenary.nvim"

Modules

• plenary.async
• plenary.async_lib
• plenary.job
• plenary.path
• plenary.scandir
• plenary.context_manager
• plenary.test_harness
• plenary.filetype
• plenary.strings

plenary.async

A Lua module for asynchronous programming using coroutines. This library is built on native lua coroutines and libuv. Coroutines make it easy to avoid callback hell and allow for easy cooperative concurrency and cancellation. Apart from allowing users to perform asynchronous io easily, this library also functions as an abstraction for coroutines.

Getting started

You can do

local async = require "plenary.async"

All other modules are automatically required and can be accessed by indexing async. You needn't worry about performance as this will require all the submodules lazily.

A quick example

Libuv luv provides this example of reading a file.

local uv = vim.loop

local read_file = function(path, callback)
  uv.fs_open(path, "r", 438, function(err, fd)
    assert(not err, err)
    uv.fs_fstat(fd, function(err, stat)
      assert(not err, err)
      uv.fs_read(fd, stat.size, 0, function(err, data)
        assert(not err, err)
        uv.fs_close(fd, function(err)
          assert(not err, err)
          callback(data)
        end)
      end)
    end)
  end)
end

We can write it using the library like this:

local a = require "plenary.async"

local read_file = function(path)
  local err, fd = a.uv.fs_open(path, "r", 438)
  assert(not err, err)

  local err, stat = a.uv.fs_fstat(fd)
  assert(not err, err)

  local err, data = a.uv.fs_read(fd, stat.size, 0)
  assert(not err, err)

  local err = a.uv.fs_close(fd)
  assert(not err, err)

  return data
end

Plugins using this

• telescope.nvim
• vgit.nvim
• neogit
• neo-tree.nvim

plenary.async_lib

Please use plenary.async instead. This was version 1 and is just here for compatibility reasons.

plenary.async.control.channel.oneshot

Creates a oneshot channel. It can only send data one time.

The sender is not async while the receiver is.

Example:

local a = require'plenary.async'
local tx, rx = a.control.channel.oneshot()

a.run(function()
    local ret = long_running_fn()
    tx(ret)
end)

local ret = rx()

plenary.async.control.channel.mpsc

Creates a multiple producer single consumer channel.

Example:

local a = require'plenary.async'
local sender, receiver = a.control.channel.mpsc()

a.run(function()
  sender.send(10)
  sender.send(20)
end)

a.run(function()
  sender.send(30)
  sender.send(40)
end)

for _ = 1, 4 do
  local value = receiver.recv()
  print('received:', value)
end

plenary.job

A Lua module to interact with system processes. Pass in your command, the desired args, env and cwd. Define optional callbacks for on_stdout, on_stderr and on_exit and start your Job.

Note: Each job has an empty environment.

local Job = require'plenary.job'

Job:new({
  command = 'rg',
  args = { '--files' },
  cwd = '/usr/bin',
  env = { ['a'] = 'b' },
  on_exit = function(j, return_val)
    print(return_val)
    print(j:result())
  end,
}):sync() -- or start()

plenary.path

A Lua module that implements a bunch of the things from pathlib from Python, so that paths are easy to work with.

plenary.scandir

plenary.scandir is fast recursive file operations. It is similar to unix find or fd in that it can do recursive scans over a given directory, or a set of directories.

It offers a wide range of opts for limiting the depth, show hidden and more. plenary.scan_dir can be ran synchronously and asynchronously and offers on_insert(file, typ) and on_exit(files) callbacks. on_insert(file, typ) is available for both while on_exit(files) is only available for async.

local scan = require'plenary.scandir'
scan.scan_dir('.', { hidden = true, depth = 2 })

This module also offers ls -la sync and async functions that will return a formated string for all files in the directory. Why? Just for fun

plenary.context_manager

Implements with and open just like in Python. For example:

local with = context_manager.with
local open = context_manager.open

local result = with(open("README.md"), function(reader)
  return reader:read()
end)

assert(result == "# plenary.nvim")

plenary.test_harness

:help plenary-test

Supports (simple) busted-style testing. It implements a mock-ed busted interface, that will allow you to run simple busted style tests in separate neovim instances.

To run the current spec file in a floating window, you can use the keymap <Plug>PlenaryTestFile. For example:

nmap <leader>t <Plug>PlenaryTestFile

In this case, the test is run with a minimal configuration, that includes in its runtimepath only plenary.nvim and the current working directory.

To run a whole directory from the command line, you could do something like:

nvim --headless -c "PlenaryBustedDirectory tests/plenary/ {options}"

Where the first argument is the directory you'd like to test. It will search for files with the pattern *_spec.lua and execute them in separate neovim instances.

Without second argument, PlenaryBustedDirectory is also run with a minimal configuration. Otherwise it is a Lua option table with the following fields:

• nvim_cmd: specify the command to launch this neovim instance (defaults to vim.v.progpath)
• init: specify an init.vim to use for this instance
• minimal_init: as for init, but also run the neovim instance with --noplugin
• sequential: whether to run tests sequentially (default is to run in parallel)
• keep_going: if sequential, whether to continue on test failure (default true)
• timeout: controls the maximum time allotted to each job in parallel or sequential operation (defaults to 50,000 milliseconds)

The exit code is 0 when success and 1 when fail, so you can use it easily in a Makefile!

NOTE:

So far, the only supported busted items are:

• describe
• it
• pending
• before_each
• after_each
• clear
• assert.* etc. (from luassert, which is bundled)

OTHER NOTE:

We used to support luaunit and original busted but it turns out it was way too hard and not worthwhile for the difficulty of getting them setup, particularly on other platforms or in CI. Now, we have a dep free (or at least, no other installation steps necessary) busted implementation that can be used more easily.

Please take a look at the new APIs and make any issues for things that aren't clear. I am happy to fix them and make it work well :)

OTHER OTHER NOTE: Take a look at some test examples here.

Colors

You no longer need nvim-terminal to get this to work. We use nvim_open_term now.

plenary.filetype

Will detect the filetype based on extension/special filename/shebang or modeline

• require'plenary.filetype'.detect(filepath, opts) is a function that does all of above and exits as soon as a filetype is found
• require'plenary.filetype'.detect_from_extension(filepath)
• require'plenary.filetype'.detect_from_name(filepath)
• require'plenary.filetype'.detect_from_modeline(filepath)
• require'plenary.filetype'.detect_from_shebang(filepath)

Add filetypes by creating a new file named ~/.config/nvim/data/plenary/filetypes/foo.lua and register that file with :lua require'plenary.filetype'.add_file('foo'). Content of the file should look like that:

return {
  extension = {
    -- extension = filetype
    -- example:
    ['jl'] = 'julia',
  },
  file_name = {
    -- special filenames, likes .bashrc
    -- we provide a decent amount
    -- name = filetype
    -- example:
    ['.bashrc'] = 'bash',
  },
  shebang = {
    -- Shebangs are supported as well. Currently we provide
    -- sh, bash, zsh, python, perl with different prefixes like
    -- /usr/bin, /bin/, /usr/bin/env, /bin/env
    -- shebang = filetype
    -- example:
    ['/usr/bin/node'] = 'javascript',
  }
}

plenary.strings

Re-implement VimL funcs to use them in Lua loop.

• strings.strdisplaywidth
• strings.strcharpart

And some other funcs are here to deal with common problems.

• strings.truncate
• strings.align_str
• strings.dedent

plenary.profile

Thin wrapper around LuaJIT's jit.p profiler.

require'plenary.profile'.start("profile.log")

-- code to be profiled

require'plenary.profile'.stop()

You can use start("profile.log", {flame = true}) to output the log in a flamegraph-compatible format. A flamegraph can be created from this using https://github.com/jonhoo/inferno via

inferno-flamegraph profile.log > flame.svg

The resulting interactive SVG file can be viewed in any browser.

Status: WIP

plenary.popup

See popup documentation for both progress tracking and implemented APIs.

plenary.window

Window helper functions to wrap some of the more difficult cases. Particularly for floating windows.

Status: WIP

plenary.collections

Contains pure lua implementations for various standard collections.

local List = require 'plenary.collections.py_list'

local myList = List { 9, 14, 32, 5 }

for i, v in myList:iter() do
    print(i, v)
end

Status: WIP

Troubleshooting

If you're having trouble / things are hanging / other problems:

$ export DEBUG_PLENARY=true

This will enable debugging for the plugin.

plenary.neorocks

DELETED: Please use packer.nvim or other lua-rocks wrapper instead. This no longer exists.

FAQ

1. Error: Too many open files

• *nix systems have a setting to configure the maximum amount of open file handles. It can occur that the default value is pretty low and that you end up getting this error after opening a couple of files. On Linux you can see the current limit with ulimit -n and set it with ulimit -n 4096. If you're on macOS the command is sudo launchctl limit maxfiles 4096 4096.