How can I open multiple tabs at once?

Question

If I use:

:tabedit file1 file2

I get:

E172: Only one file name allowed

Is there any way to use :tabedit with multiple file names? Or another way to open multiple tabs at once?

Answer 1

As far as I know, the only built-in way to do this is:

:args *.vim
:tab all

First, the :args will replace the argument list. The argument list lists the files you opened Vim with; so vim file1 file2 means that the argument list contains file1 and file2.
We can modify this at runtime, and Vim will open a buffer for every new entry in the argument list.
See :help argument-list for more information.

The :all command opens a window for every entry in the argument list, the :tab command executes a command, and opens a new tab when the command given would open a new window.

Caveats

There are some caveats to this method.

First of all, there is no check for duplicates, so you can end up with 2 or more tabs for the same buffer.

But the largest problem is that it replaces all your tabs with what is in the argument list; so you lost all existing tabs.
You can slightly circumvent this by using :argadd *.vim to add to the argument list, instead of replacing it; but commands such as :edit or :tabedit do not alter the argument list, and you will lose those tabs unless you add them to the argument list (you still have them in the buffer list, though). You may also not want to open everything in your argument list in a tab, perhaps you just want to open 2 files as an additional tab.

You could perhaps make this slightly better by first adding adding all currently open tabs to the argument list (which I can't really get to work), but this still is far from perfect. If a tab has 2 or more windows, it will still modify them...

Answer 2

Given the problems & complexity in my other answer using the "built-in" way by modifying the argument list, I've added by own small function to do this:

" Open multiple tabs at once
fun! OpenMultipleTabs(pattern_list)
    for p in a:pattern_list
        for c in glob(l:p, 0, 1)
            execute 'tabedit ' . l:c
        endfor
    endfor
endfun

command! -bar -bang -nargs=+ -complete=file Tabedit call OpenMultipleTabs([<f-args>])

You can now use :Tabedit *.vim. This function will expand all globbing patterns, and execute :tabedit <f> for every file. You can add as many pathnames as you want, for example this all works:

:Tabedit file.rb
:Tabedit *.c
:Tabedit file1.py file2.py _*.py
:Tabedit /etc/hosts file{1,2}.sh

Well, and so forth...

I put this in a little globedit.vim plugin, which also contains command for :Edit, :Split, etc.

Answer 3

You can use :next command instead, in example:

:n file1 file2

or:

:n *.txt

Answer 4

From command line you can use:

vim file1 ... filen -p

And if you forgot to use -p still you can use

:tab ball

Btw, don't forget that the variable tabpagemax (default value 10) limits how many tabs you can open this way.

Answer 5

You actually can open new tabs and keep your current tabs without writing new functions (see this answer on Stack Overflow):

:args file1 file2 | argdo tabe

You may want to open a new empty tab (:tabe) before doing that, because the first file will open in the current tab. Also, an extra empty tab will be left open (see :help argdo to understand why).