Load multiple files with a single command
From Vim Tips Wiki
Tip 888 Previous Next Created: March 3, 2005 Complexity: basic Author: Tye Z Version: 6.0
When starting Vim, you can open multiple files, one to a window or tab, with the -o, -O or -p options. This tip discusses doing the same from within Vim.
You can use a command like :args *.c to replace the argument list with all .c files, then display those files with a command like :sall (split window to show one file per window), or :tab sall (show one file per tab).
Here is another method. Put the following in your vimrc:
com! -complete=file -nargs=* Edit silent! exec "!vim --servername " . v:servername . " --remote-silent <args>"
This uses the shell to send remote commands to the current instance of Vim.
Then do something like this to edit multiple files:
:Edit .vim/colors/*
Customizations
- If desired, substitute --remote-tab-silent in place of --remote-silent to load all the files in new tabs.
- If running under Windows, you'll probably want to allow backslashes to occur in path names, like this:
com! -complete=file -nargs=* Edit silent! exec "!vim --servername " . v:servername . " --remote-silent ".escape(<q-args>,'\')
[edit] Alternative
If you put the following code in your vimrc, you can simply do :Etabs file list, :Ewindows file list (horizontal windows), or :Evwindows file list (vertical windows).
The commands can be abbreviated, and the function allows for file globbing, so doing something like :Et *.html should work. You may even find yourself using one of these to replace the :edit command!
command! -complete=file -nargs=+ Etabs call s:ETW('tabnew', <f-args>)
command! -complete=file -nargs=+ Ewindows call s:ETW('new', <f-args>)
command! -complete=file -nargs=+ Evwindows call s:ETW('vnew', <f-args>)
function! s:ETW(what, ...)
for f1 in a:000
let files = glob(f1)
if files == ''
execute a:what . ' ' . escape(f1, '\ "')
else
for f2 in split(files, "\n")
execute a:what . ' ' . escape(f2, '\ "')
endfor
endif
endfor
endfunction
[edit] References
[edit] Comments
TO DO
- Use fnameescape(), especially in the method that uses the shell.
From VimTip1234 comments section, an alternate method:
You can load an arbitrary list of files with :args <pattern>, for instance:
Open all .c or .h files in the directory (and it's subdirectories) two directories up from the current directory:
- args ../../**/*.[ch]
The only caveat (and it's a major one) is that it's very slow.
