NERDTree is a great vi plugin which definitely speed up the development time for programmers using vi for file editing. For more information about NERDTree, please refer to NERDTree – The File Explorer in vi/vim.

To further speed up the file editing efficiency, we could map the vi commands to hotkeys in the /etc/vim/vimrc.

map <F2> :NERDTreeToggle<CR>
map <F3> :tabp<CR>
map <F4> :tabn<CR>
map <F5> :tabnew<CR>

Restart vi and now you can open and close the NERDTree Explorer by pressing F2 and manipulate the vi tabs with F3, F4 and F5.

Done =)

Reference:

• The NERD tree : A tree explorer plugin for navigating the filesystem
• Vim Plugins You Should Know About, Part VI: nerd_tree.vim
• StackOverflow – Switching between tabs in NERDTree
• StackOverflow – How to jump back to NERDTree from file in tab?