Placing the following snippet in your vimrc file, makes Vim insert these preprocessor gates automatically, when a new header file is created: function! s:insert_gates() let gatename = substitute(toupper(expand("%:t")), "\\.", "_", "g") execute "normal! i#ifndef " . gatename execute "normal! o#define " . gatename . " " execute "normal! Go#endif /* " . gatename . " */" normal! kk endfunction autocmd BufNewFile *.{h,hpp} call insert_gates()