Automated editing of multiple files with vim

Sometimes you need to process a heap of files, selecting them by mask or by list. It’s not common deal so I usually forget a sophisticated argdo syntax and do it manually.

But it turned out to be easy! I use mvim, but it will work to vim and vi as well.

Firstly, we open a bunch of files:

mvim filename-wildcard-1.txt filename-wildcard-2.txt filename-wildcard-3.txt

Or use a wildcard:

mvim filename-wildcard-*.txt

You will see the first file of the bunch. Now we going to make the same changes to every file using the recursive macro:

1. q q q to empty q register. If you won’t the previous macro from q register will run on step 5.
2. q q to start recording the macro.
3. Do something to file. For example, remove first line with d d.
4. Hummer out :w | n to write the file and to move to the next one.
5. Hit @q to run current macro recursively. There’s a trick! On step 1. we’ve cleared the q register and nothing will happen. But after 6 step macro will be written into q register and run in this place on the next run.
6. q to stop writing macro.
7. @q to run the macro. It will run untill @q command and then run itself.

Macro runs itself untill it bumps into a last file. Notification will appear. Done!