Spread already open files into split view

Question

Suppose I open multiple files in vim like this:

vim a.cc b.cc x.cc

vim will open all files, but show only one at a time, the rest being accessible using the :next command.

After having these files opened, how to spread them into a split view, like if I had used the -O flag when opening them? Also, it would be nice to know how can I spread them into tabs too.

Answer 1

Here are a bunch of helpful commands for you:

To open every buffer in a horizontal split:

:sball

To open every buffer in a vertical split:

:vert sball

You can do the same thing with tabs, e.g, to open every buffer into its own tab:

:bufdo tab split

If you would like more control over how they get split, you can do this individually.

First, list every open buffer with:

:ls

Then you can choose what to do for each buffer.

To open buffer N in a horizontal split:

:sb N

sb is an abbreviation of :sbuffer

To open buffer N in a vertical split:

:vert sb N

To open buffer N in a new tab:

:tabedit | bN