How do I trigger wildmenu completion from inside a custom mapping in Vim?

Explanation

The wildchar option (default <Tab>) triggers wildmenu completion on the command line. But <Tab> cannot be embedded literally in a mapping's right-hand side — pressing it finishes the mapping before completion runs. The wildcharm option provides a second trigger that can be used inside mappings, giving you inline completion from your own key bindings.

How it works

• wildchar — the key that opens the wild menu interactively (default <Tab>)
• wildcharm — a parallel trigger that works inside cnoremap and nnoremap expressions; does nothing when typed directly

Set wildcharm to <Tab> once in your config:

set wildcharm=<Tab>

Now you can embed <Tab> in normal-mode mappings to trigger completion:

nnoremap <Leader>e :e **/<Tab>
nnoremap <Leader>b :buffer <Tab>

Example

After :set wildcharm=<Tab>, pressing <Leader>e opens the command line pre-filled with :e **/ and immediately opens the wildmenu, letting you fuzzy-navigate to any file in the project without a plugin.

:e **/<wildmenu shown here>
foo/bar/baz.go
foo/bar/qux.go
...

Use <Tab> / <S-Tab> to cycle through matches and <CR> to confirm.

Tips

• Combine with set wildmode=list:full and set wildignore to filter noisy paths
• Works with any Ex command that accepts completion: :buffer <Tab>, :help <Tab>, :colorscheme <Tab>
• wildcharm is unset (0) by default — you must enable it explicitly