I've started using Vim to develop Perl scripts and am starting to find it very powerful.
One thing I like is to be able to open multiple files at once with:
vi main.pl maintenance.pl
and then hop between them with:
:n
:prev
and see which file are open with:
:args
And to add a file, I can say:
:n test.pl
which I expect would then be added to my list of files, but instead it wipes out my current file list and when I type :args
I only have test.pl
open.
So how can I add and remove files in my args list?
:N
seems like an easier way to go to the previous file...
Why not use tabs (introduced in Vim 7)? You can switch between tabs with :tabn
and :tabp
, With :tabe <filepath>
you can add a new tab; and with a regular :q
or :wq
you close a tab. If you map :tabn
and :tabp
to your F7/F8 keys you can easily switch between files.
If there are not that many files or you don't have Vim 7 you can also split your screen in multiple files: :sp <filepath>
. Then you can switch between splitscreens with Ctrl+W and then an arrow key in the direction you want to move (or instead of arrow keys, w for next and W for previous splitscreen)
Listing
To see a list of current buffers, I use:
:ls
Opening
To open a new file, I use
:e ../myFile.pl
with enhanced tab completion (put set wildmenu
in your .vimrc
).
Note: you can also use :find
which will search a set of paths for you, but you need to customize those paths first.
Switching
To switch between all open files, I use
:b myfile
with enhanced tab completion (still set wildmenu
).
Note: :b#
chooses the last visited file, so you can use it to switch quickly between two files.
Using windows
Ctrl-W s
and Ctrl-W v
to split the current window horizontally and vertically. You can also use :split
and :vertical split
(:sp
and :vs
)
Ctrl-W w
to switch between open windows, and Ctrl-W h
(or j
or k
or l
) to navigate through open windows.
Ctrl-W c
to close the current window, and Ctrl-W o
to close all windows except the current one.
Starting vim with a -o
or -O
flag opens each file in its own split.
With all these I don't need tabs in Vim, and my fingers find my buffers, not my eyes.
Note: if you want all files to go to the same instance of Vim, start Vim with the --remote-silent
option.
:b
is a very powerful command because it can accept both buffer numbers and buffer names as arguments. What more? It also supports tab-completion on any part of the filename. Say, you have foo.txt open in buffer 2, you can type :b 2<Enter>
or :b foo.txt
or :b oo<Tab><Enter>
to edit that file. Yes, the last one would complete 'oo' to 'foo.txt' when you press <Tab>.
nnoremap gb :ls<cr>:b<space>
. When I type gb
in command mode, it lists my open buffers and types :b
, ready for me to start typing a buffer name/number.
:b
will accept a substring match as long as it's unambiguous. So if you have open files foo
, bar
, and baz
, just :b z
is enough to switch you to the baz
buffer, and :b oo
or :b o
will take you to the foo
buffer.
:ls
for list of open buffers
:bp previous buffer
:bn next buffer
:bn (n a number) move to n'th buffer
:b
In some versions of vim, bn
and bp
are actually bnext
and bprevious
respectively. Tab auto-complete is helpful in this case.
Or when you are in normal mode, use ^
to switch to the last file you were working on.
Plus, you can save sessions of vim
:mksession! ~/today.ses
The above command saves the current open file buffers and settings to ~/today.ses
. You can load that session by using
vim -S ~/today.ses
No hassle remembering where you left off yesterday. ;)
"
mark to jump to where you were in the file last time.
To add to the args
list:
:argadd
To delete from the args
list:
:argdelete
In your example, you could use :argedit
test.pl to add test.pl to the args
list and edit the file in one step.
:help args
gives much more detail and advanced usage
I use buffer commands - :bn
(next buffer), :bp
(previous buffer) :buffers
(list open buffers) :b<n>
(open buffer n) :bd
(delete buffer). :e <filename>
will just open into a new buffer.
I think you may be using the wrong command for looking at the list of files that you have open.
Try doing an :ls
to see the list of files that you have open and you'll see:
1 %a "./checkin.pl" line 1
2 # "./grabakamailogs.pl" line 1
3 "./grabwmlogs.pl" line 0
etc.
You can then bounce through the files by referring to them by the numbers listed, e.g. :3b
or you can split your screen by entering the number but using sb instead of just b.
As an aside % refers to the file currently visible and # refers to the alternate file.
You can easily toggle between these two files by pressing Ctrl Shift 6
Edit: like :ls
you can use :reg
to see the current contents of your registers including the 0-9 registers that contain what you've deleted. This is especially useful if you want to reuse some text that you've previously deleted.
Vim (but not the original Vi!) has tabs which I find (in many contexts) superior to buffers. You can say :tabe [filename]
to open a file in a new tab. Cycling between tabs is done by clicking on the tab or by the key combinations [n]gt
and gT
. Graphical Vim even has graphical tabs.
vim -p dir/*
. Max tab size is 10, but you can change it in ~/.vimrc
setting tabpagemax
to some other value.
Things like :e
and :badd
will only accept ONE argument, therefore the following will fail
:e foo.txt bar.txt
:e /foo/bar/*.txt
:badd /foo/bar/*
If you want to add multiple files from within vim, use arga[dd]
:arga foo.txt bar.txt
:arga /foo/bar/*.txt
:argadd /foo/bar/*
Many answers here! What I use without reinventing the wheel - the most famous plugins (that are not going to die any time soon and are used by many people) to be ultra fast and geeky.
ctrlpvim/ctrlp.vim - to find file by name fuzzy search by its location or just its name
jlanzarotta/bufexplorer - to browse opened buffers (when you do not remember how many files you opened and modified recently and you do not remember where they are, probably because you searched for them with Ag)
rking/ag.vim to search the files with respect to gitignore
scrooloose/nerdtree to see the directory structure, lookaround, add/delete/modify files
EDIT: Recently I have been using dyng/ctrlsf.vim to search with contextual view (like Sublime search) and I switched the engine from ag to ripgrep. The performance is outstanding.
EDIT2: Along with CtrlSF you can use mg979/vim-visual-multi, make changes to multiple files at once and then at the end save them in one go.
Some answers in this thread suggest using tabs and others suggest using buffer to accomplish the same thing. Tabs and Buffers are different. I strongly suggest you read this article "Vim Tab madness - Buffers vs Tabs".
Here's a nice summary I pulled from the article:
Summary:
A buffer is the in-memory text of a file.
A window is a viewport on a buffer.
A tab page is a collection of windows.
:help window
in Vim
To change all buffers to tab
view.
:tab sball
will open all the buffers to tab view. Then we can use any tab related commands
gt or :tabn " go to next tab
gT or :tabp or :tabN " go to previous tab
details at :help tab-page-commands
.
We can instruct vim to open ,as tab view, multiple files by vim -p file1 file2
. alias vim='vim -p'
will be useful.
The same thing can also be achieved by having following autocommand in ~/.vimrc
au VimEnter * if !&diff | tab all | tabfirst | endif
Anyway to answer the question: To add to arg list: arga file
,
To delete from arg list: argd pattern
More at :help arglist
When using multiple files in vim, I use these commands mostly (with ~350 files open):
:b
:bw (buffer wipe, remove a buffer)
:e
pltags - enable jumping to subroutine/method definitions
:b <partial filename><tab>
plus set wildmenu
in your .vimrc
works well for when you've got tons of buffers open. Then you just partial match and scroll through the ones it finds. In other decent editors you have fuzzy finding but normally you can't restrict that fuzzy finding to just the files you have open.
You may want to use Vim global marks.
This way you can quickly bounce between files, and even to the marked location in the file. Also, the key commands are short: 'C
takes me to the code I'm working with, 'T
takes me to the unit test I'm working with.
When you change places, resetting the marks is quick too: mC
marks the new code spot, mT
marks the new test spot.
If using only vim built-in commands, the best one that I ever saw to switch among multiple buffers is this:
nnoremap <Leader>f :set nomore<Bar>:ls<Bar>:set more<CR>:b<Space>
It perfectly combines both :ls
and :b
commands -- listing all opened buffers and waiting for you to input the command to switch buffer.
Given above mapping in vimrc, once you type <Leader>f
,
All opened buffers are displayed
You can: Type 23 to go to buffer 23, Type # to go to the alternative/MRU buffer, Type partial name of file, then type
Type 23 to go to buffer 23,
Type # to go to the alternative/MRU buffer,
Type partial name of file, then type
Or just
A snapshot of output for the above key mapping is:
:set nomore|:ls|:set more
1 h "script.py" line 1
2 #h + "file1.txt" line 6 -- '#' for alternative buffer
3 %a "README.md" line 17 -- '%' for current buffer
4 "file3.txt" line 0 -- line 0 for hasn't switched to
5 + "/etc/passwd" line 42 -- '+' for modified
:b '<Cursor> here'
In the above snapshot:
Second column: %a for current, h for hidden, # for previous, empty for hasn't been switched to.
Third column: + for modified.
Also, I strongly suggest set hidden
. See :help 'hidden'
.
:b
and :ls
a lot but independently. I think this becomes less useful when you've got more than a page worth of buffers, but then you can still just fall back to :b
nnoremap <leader>f :ls<cr>:b<space>
, that might hit issues with the 'more' command though
set more
stuff only makes difference when there are many files open (more than one page), eg, vim /usr/include/*
, though less useful then.
I use the same .vimrc file for gVim and the command line Vim. I tend to use tabs in gVim and buffers in the command line Vim, so I have my .vimrc set up to make working with both of them easier:
" Movement between tabs OR buffers
nnoremap L :call MyNext()<CR>
nnoremap H :call MyPrev()<CR>
" MyNext() and MyPrev(): Movement between tabs OR buffers
function! MyNext()
if exists( '*tabpagenr' ) && tabpagenr('$') != 1
" Tab support && tabs open
normal gt
else
" No tab support, or no tabs open
execute ":bnext"
endif
endfunction
function! MyPrev()
if exists( '*tabpagenr' ) && tabpagenr('$') != '1'
" Tab support && tabs open
normal gT
else
" No tab support, or no tabs open
execute ":bprev"
endif
endfunction
This clobbers the existing mappings for H and L, but it makes switching between files extremely fast and easy. Just hit H for next and L for previous; whether you're using tabs or buffers, you'll get the intended results.
If you are going to use multiple buffers, I think the most important thing is to set hidden so that it will let you switch buffers even if you have unsaved changes in the one you are leaving.
I use the following, this gives you lots of features that you'd expect to have in other editors such as Sublime Text / Textmate
Use buffers not 'tab pages'. Buffers are the same concept as tabs in almost all other editors. If you want the same look of having tabs you can use the vim-airline plugin with the following setting in your .vimrc: let g:airline#extensions#tabline#enabled = 1. This automatically displays all the buffers as tab headers when you have no tab pages opened Use Tim Pope's vim-unimpaired which gives [b and ]b for moving to previous/next buffers respectively (plus a whole host of other goodies) Have set wildmenu in your .vimrc then when you type :b
My way to effectively work with multiple files is to use tmux.
It allows you to split windows vertically and horizontally, as in:
https://i.stack.imgur.com/XDnTX.png
https://i.stack.imgur.com/O0N8A.png
tmux also support horizontal and vertical panes which the older screen
didn't (though mac's iterm2 seems to support it, but again, the current directory setting didn't work for me). tmux 1.8
In my and other many vim users, the best option is to,
Open the file using,
:e file_name.extension
And then just Ctrl + 6 to change to the last buffer. Or, you can always press
:ls to list the buffer and then change the buffer using b followed by the buffer number.
We make a vertical or horizontal split using
:vsp for vertical split :sp for horizantal split
And then <C-W><C-H/K/L/j>
to change the working split.
You can ofcourse edit any file in any number of splits.
I use the command line and git a lot, so I have this alias in my bashrc:
alias gvim="gvim --servername \$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel || echo 'default') --remote-tab"
This will open each new file in a new tab on an existing window and will create one window for each git repository. So if you open two files from repo A, and 3 files from repo B, you will end up with two windows, one for repo A with two tabs and one for repo B with three tabs.
If the file you are opening is not contained in a git repo it will go to a default window.
To jump between tabs I use these mappings:
nmap <C-p> :tabprevious<CR>
nmap <C-n> :tabnext<CR>
To open multiple files at once you should combine this with one of the other solutions.
I use multiple buffers that are set hidden in my ~/.vimrc
file.
The mini-buffer explorer script is nice too to get a nice compact listing of your buffers. Then :b1
or :b2
... to go to the appropriate buffer or use the mini-buffer explorer and tab through the buffers.
have a try following maps for convenience editing multiple files
" split windows
nmap <leader>sh :leftabove vnew<CR>
nmap <leader>sl :rightbelow vnew<CR>
nmap <leader>sk :leftabove new<CR>
nmap <leader>sj :rightbelow new<CR>
" moving around
nmap <C-j> <C-w>j
nmap <C-k> <C-w>k
nmap <C-l> <C-w>l
nmap <C-h> <C-w>h
I made a very simple video showing the workflow that I use. Basically I use the Ctrl-P Vim plugin, and I mapped the buffer navigation to the Enter key.
In this way I can press Enter in normal mode, look at the list of open files (that shows up in a small new window at the bottom of the screen), select the file I want to edit and press Enter again. To quickly search through multiple open files, just type part of the file name, select the file and press Enter.
I don't have many files open in the video, but it becomes incredibly helpful when you start having a lot of them.
Since the plugin sorts the buffers using a MRU ordering, you can just press Enter twice and jump to the most recent file you were editing.
After the plugin is installed, the only configuration you need is:
nmap <CR> :CtrlPBuffer<CR>
Of course you can map it to a different key, but I find the mapping to enter to be very handy.
When I started using VIM I didn't realize that tabs were supposed to be used as different window layouts, and buffer serves the role for multiple file editing / switching between each other. Actually in the beginning tabs are not even there before v7.0 and I just opened one VIM inside a terminal tab (I was using gnome-terminal at the moment), and switch between tabs using alt+numbers, since I thought using commands like :buffers, :bn and :bp were too much for me. When VIM 7.0 was released I find it's easier to manager a lot of files and switched to it, but recently I just realized that buffers should always be the way to go, unless one thing: you need to configure it to make it works right.
So I tried vim-airline and enabled the visual on-top tab-like buffer bar, but graphic was having problem with my iTerm2, so I tried a couple of others and it seems that MBE works the best for me. I also set shift+h/l as shortcuts, since the original ones (moving to the head/tail of the current page) is not very useful to me.
map <S-h> :bprev<Return>
map <S-l> :bnext<Return>
It seems to be even easier than gt and gT, and :e is easier than :tabnew too. I find :bd is not as convenient as :q though (MBE is having some problem with it) but I can live with all files in buffer I think.
Most of the answers in this thread are using plain vim commands which is of course fine but I thought I would provide an extensive answer using a combination of plugins and functions that I find particularly useful (at least some of these tips came from Gary Bernhardt's file navigation tips):
To toggle between the last two file just press
These should be enough for finding and opening files. From there of course use horizontal and vertical splits. Concerning splits I find these functions particularly useful:
Open new splits in smaller areas when there is not enough room and expand them on navigation. Refer here for comments on what these do exactly: set winwidth=84
set winheight=5
set winminheight=5
set winheight=999
nnoremap
if you're on osx and want to be able to click on your tabs, use MouseTerm and SIMBL (taken from here). Also, check out this related discussion.
You can be an absolute madman and alias vim
to vim -p
by adding in your .bashrc
:
alias vim="vim -p"
This will result in opening multiple files from the shell in tabs, without having to invoke :tab ball
from within vim afterwards.
To open 2 or more files with vim type: vim -p file1 file2 After that command to go threw that files you can use CTRL+Shift+↑ or ↓ , it will change your files in vim. If u want to add one more file vim and work on it use: :tabnew file3 Also u can use which will not create a new tab and will open file on screen slicing your screen: :new file3 If u want to use a plugin that will help u work with directories and files i suggest u NERDTree. To download it u need to have vim-plug so to download other plugins also NERDTree to type this commands in your ~/.vimrc.
let data_dir = has('nvim') ? stdpath('data') . '/site' : '~/.vim'
if empty(glob(data_dir . '/autoload/plug.vim'))
silent execute '!curl -fLo '.data_dir.'/autoload/plug.vim --create-dirs
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/junegunn/vim-plug/master/plug.vim'
autocmd VimEnter * PlugInstall --sync | source $MYVIMRC
endif
call plug#begin('~/.vim/plugged')
Plug 'scrooloose/nerdtree'
call plug#end()
Then save .vimrc via command :wq , get back to it and type: :PlugInstall
After that the plugins will be installed and u could use your NERDTree with other plugins.
Success story sharing
ZZ
instead of:wq
(just like would normally save and close)gt
goes to the next tab, andgT
goes to the previous tab.-p
flag to open multiple files in tabs from the command line. For example,gvim -p main.pl maintenance.pl
will open these two files in tabs.