I use scratch (unnamed) buffers in Vim a fair bit when working with text manipulation for content not saved to a file such as editing some JSON, or building some commands to run from a list of ids. Knowing how to easily create scratch buffers is a must have when using Vim.

The simplest command for creating a scratch buffer is:

:enew

This will create a new scratch buffer that you can start using. This is akin to a new unnamed tab in other editors like VS Code. But you can also use the variants of this command to create a vertical or horizontally split scratch buffer.

This is very handy since often I want to work in the scratch buffer while keeping some other code in view.

:vnew " Scratch buffer in a vertical split
:hnew " Scratch buffer in a horizontal split

I originally tried :vsplit enew but that creates a vertical split with a buffer named enew, rather than a true scratch buffer. Now I can check this off my learning list!