Vim - dynamic list of open buffers in a window

Solution 1:

Did you search vim.org's plugin repository? There are dozens of buffer switching plugins for you to choose from like BufferGator or SelectBuf. Alternatively, most of them are compiled in a nice list on the Vim wiki.

As you alluded in the last part of your question that kind of system is not to everyone's taste.

I hate having all those menus, buttons and lists of this or that open at all times: a list of open buffers is only useful when you actually need to jump to another buffer, leaving such a list open seems like a waste of space to me. The same can be applied to supercharged statuslines as well.

I use the same plugin for quicly switching between buffers and quicly exploring the filesystem around the file I'm currently editing. Invoked with ,f (files) or ,b (buffers), the window disappears when I'm done. Perfect. There are other similar plugins, try them all if you like that idea.

EDIT

I feel compelled to add an animated GIF of CtrlP in action, switching buffers:

ENDEDIT

The native :sb <Tab> is also pretty neat but less sexy. It doesn't support fuzzy matching but it has some big advantages: it's built in and it works like :e <Tab>, :vs <Tab> and so on.

Solution 2:

I can highly recommend the MiniBufExplorer. See also an alternative to minibufexplorer?