Mode-local keybindings in ViM?

Question

I've recently return to ViM, after several years in Emacs, and something I'm missing is the ability to set filetype-local keybindings: e.g. I want to make _ underline the current word in Markdown-type files, but do something completely different in, say, Python. Is there a way to do this other than just autocmds that override each other?

Answer 1

You can use map <buffer> ... to make a mapping local to a buffer rather than global. Then set up an autocommand to load that mapping only for certain filetypes, or put the mapping into a ftplugin file for that filetype. Luckily, local mappings aren't cleared when a buffer is hidden, only when a buffer is destroyed, so the mappings will stick around as you switch between buffers.

See :h :map-local.