Execute command for multiple files

Question

I find myself often in the situation in which I want to run multiple vim commands on a multiple files.

Consider file1.txt, file2.txt, file3.txt I would need to run :retab and then some :%s/ /, / for instance.

How can I pipe this through vim?

Answer 1

First, you are running Vim, not Vi, because the latter does not offer the retab command.

Assuming the file should be modified (that is what x does below), you can pipe the commands to Ex improved mode this way:

printf '%s\n' 'retab' '%s/ /, /' 'x' | vim -E file1.txt

Now, bear in mind that Ex will skip your .vimrc, so retab will not take tabstop and expandtab values from that file. Of course, you can just manually supply them, for example,

printf '%s\n' 'set expandtab' 'retab' '%s/ /, /' 'x' | vim -E file1.txt

To operate on various files (matching file[digit].txt), just wrap it in a shell loop,

for file in file[0-9].txt; do
    printf '%s\n' 'set expandtab' 'retab' '%s/ /, /' 'x' | vim -E "$file"
done

Answer 2

You can use the -c argument in the command-line to run commands in Vim after opening a file. You can pass it multiple times to run the several separate commands. Once you run the editing commands, you'll probably want to include a :wq to have Vim save your changes and quit.

$ vim -c 'retab' -c '%s/ /, /' -c 'wq' file1.txt

You can of course use that inside a for loop to run it on each of your text files.

Another option is to open all the files in Vim and then use :argdo to run a sequence of commands in all the files in the argument list. In that case, you should join all your commands using | (which is the command separator in Vim) and you should end each :argdo with an :update so that it will save the file (if necessary) before proceeding to the next one. This is important, otherwise Vim might refuse to move away from the current buffer, which would break your :argdo execution.

$ vim file*.txt

Then inside Vim:

:argdo retab | %s/ /, / | update

All your files will have been updated and you'll be in the last file in your argument list. At this point you can simply quit Vim with :q.

Answer 3

With the following code, open all the files in vim, and then execute :Bufdo retab

function! Bufdo(command)
  let curbuf=bufnr("%")
  execute 'bufdo ' . a:command
  execute 'buffer ' . curbuf
endfunction
command! -nargs=+ -complete=command Bufdo call Bufdo(<q-args>)