Running a command on all buffers

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Tip 70 Printable Monobook Previous Next

created May 30, 2001 · complexity basic · author Scott Johnston · version 5.7

This page is dodgy. The contents may not be useful for Vim 7. If you think this tip is useful, please edit it to make the problem and its solution more understandable, and remove the {{Dodgy}} tag.

you should use the built-in bufdo command instead of defining your own command that does the same thing

Duplicate tip

This tip is very similar to the following:

VimTip133

These tips need to be merged – see the merge guidelines.

How to global search and replace in all buffers with one command?

You need the AllBuffers command defined in this tip:

:call AllBuffers("%s/string1/string2/g")

" Example: :call AllBuffers("%s/foo/bar/ge|update")
function AllBuffers(cmnd)
  let cmnd = a:cmnd
  let i = 1
  while (i <= bufnr("$"))
    if bufexists(i)
      execute "buffer" i
      execute cmnd
    endif
    let i = i+1
  endwhile
endfun

Comments

I have marked this tip as a "duplicate" of VimTip133, when in fact what I mean is, I think this tip should be replaced with a redirect to that one, because there is no useful content here.

--Fritzophrenic 22:42, May 23, 2010 (UTC)

Totally agree, and I will do the redirect. However, first we need to decide on the title of the target tip which is currently Windo and Bufdo. I'm wondering if the following would be worthwhile: rename the tip to Running a command on all buffers or tabs or windows (or something else?); then make redirects bufdo and tabdo and windo to the tip. That should give good search results. Please add opinions. JohnBeckett 02:17, May 24, 2010 (UTC)

How about just "Run a command on all buffers or tabs or windows"? I can't think of much better, but I mildly prefer tip titles with an active verb. --Fritzophrenic 02:41, May 24, 2010 (UTC)

I like this one better as you know exactly what is getting changed and it doesn't require writing any buffers, it just modifies them.

" execute a command for all buffers ther are shown in windows
fun! AllWindows(cmnd)
  let cmnd = a:cmnd
  let origw = winnr()
  let i = 1
  while (i <= bufnr("$"))
    if bufexists(i)
      let w = bufwinnr(i)
      if w != -1
        echo "=== window: " . w . " file: " . bufname(i)
        execute "normal \<c-w>" . w . "w"
        execute cmnd
      endif
    endif
    let i = i+1
  endwhile
  execute "normal \<c-w>" . origw . "w"
endfun

Adding those quotes is pretty boring. That is easy to fix. Just make a command like

command! -nargs=+ -complete=command AllBuf call AllBuffers(<q-args>)

You could then replace across multiple files with

:AllBuf %s/foo/bar/ge

What about the argdo and bufdo and windo commands?

bufdo disables syntax highlighting when moving between the buffers and hence is very fast.

Running a command on all buffers

Comments

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