Home

Use Lua To Insert Lines Into A Neovim Buffer/File

April 2025

Make Some Lines

This is the function I use to insert lines into a Neovim buffer:

Need to do a little more testing on this for when there is already content in the buffer

function insert_lines_at_current_position(lines)
    local window_number = 0
    local buffer_number = vim.api.nvim_win_get_buf(
        window_number
    )
    local row, col = unpack(
        vim.api.nvim_win_get_cursor(
            window_number
        )
    )
    local line_count = 0
    vim.api.nvim_buf_set_lines(
        buffer_number, 
        row, 
        row, 
        false,
        lines
    )
    for _ in pairs(lines) do
        line_count = line_count + 1
    end
    vim.api.nvim_win_set_cursor(
        window_number,
        {row + line_count, 0}
    )
end

I use it like:

insert_lines(
  {
    'example line alfa',  
    'example line bravo',
    'example line charlie'
  }
)

Notes

  • The function works like hitting p to paste when you're in normal mode (i.e. the lines are inserted below the current line and the cursor is moved to the first character of the last line that's output)
  • The function is set up to use the current buffer in the current window.
  • The argument passed to the insert_lines() function is a table with the lines to output.
end of line

Endnotes

It took me a few hours to figure this out. I couldn't find a simple, clear example. Everything was complicated with all kinds of unrelated content. Hopefully, this will help other folks who want to play around with Neovim scripting and plugins.

References