Conditional Executables

If you’re one of the growing number of people who synchronises their dotfiles using a service like GitHub, then you’ve probably found that certain systems need different configuration options. For example, if you switch between Mac OS and Linux then some executables won’t be present on both.

Vim provides a few ways to mitigate this, and one of the best is the executable function. By using this function, you can make your .vimrc adapt to the system.

I use this to conditionally use ack instead of grep if it's available:

if executable("ack")
  set grepprg=ack\ -H\ --nogroup\ --nocolor
endif

I don’t really care if ack hasn't been installed, so my grep commands will still run whether it's present or not. This is great when you want to drop dotfiles on something like a shell account or virtual machine that you use infrequently.