vim - How to map Shift-Enter

Question

I am trying to customize the behaviour of Enter key in Normal mode in Vim. Here is my .vimrc:

nmap <CR> o<Esc>
nmap <S-CR> i<CR><Esc>

I am trying to make Enter simply append a newline after the current line when pressed. However, when the Shift-Enter combination is pressed, I want to break the current line at the cursor.

The latter does not work. Whenever I press Shift-Enter it just appends a line without breaking it at the cursor.

Answer 1

Due to the way that the keyboard input is handled internally, this unfortunately isn't generally possible today in the terminal version of Vim (<S-CR> should work in GVIM on all platforms, and in the Windows console Vim). This is a known pain point, and the subject of various discussions on vim_dev and the #vim IRC channel.

Some people (foremost Paul LeoNerd Evans) want to fix that (even for console Vim in terminals that support this), and have floated various proposals, cp. http://groups.google.com/group/vim_dev/browse_thread/thread/626e83fa4588b32a/bfbcb22f37a8a1f8

But as of today, no patches or volunteers have yet come forward, though many have expressed a desire to have this in a future Vim 8 major release.

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Note on mapping <CR>:

If you map <CR> in normal mode, it'll interfere with selection of history items in the command-line window and with jumping to error under cursor in quickfix/location list windows! (Unless you add the following:)

:autocmd CmdwinEnter * nnoremap <CR> <CR>
:autocmd BufReadPost quickfix nnoremap <CR> <CR>

Note on :nmap:

You should use :noremap; it makes the mapping immune to remapping and recursion.