I'm a big fan of Vim but it has an annoying habit of littering your working directory with its own swap, backup, and undo files.
You can relocate these temporary files to a central repository by adding the following lines to your .vimrc file:
" Relocate backup files, swap files, and undo files. set backupdir=~/.cache/vim// set directory=~/.cache/vim// set undodir=~/.cache/vim//
(The trailing double slash tells Vim to encode the file's original path in its name so files from different directories can co-exist peacefully.)
You'll need to make sure the directory you specify exists or Vim will throw a mild fit. You can add
the following snippet to your .vimrc file to create the directory automatically on startup if it
doesn't already exist.
if !isdirectory($HOME . "/.cache/vim") call mkdir($HOME . "/.cache/vim", "p") endif
The "p" flag ensures that intermediary directories along the path will be created if necessary.