Open all files in a folder

Question

Suppose you'd like to open all the files in your checkout folder under the /trunk subdirectory. Assume the files are called first.c second.r third.cpp. How can you open all the files into vim with a single command.

The obvious answer is the following

$ vim first.c second.r third.cpp

But can you do this more simply?

Answer 1

To edit all files in the current folder, use:

vim *

To edit all files in tabs, use:

vim -p *

To edit all files in horizontally split windows, use:

vim -o *

Answer 2

Sounds like you're on linux or some Unix variant. Using the asterisk gets you all files in the current folder:

$ vim *

Answer 3

In addition to the answers given above, I'd like to point out that you can also do that from inside vim itself using

:args * 

which sets the arglist to be the name of the files in the directory, and then you can display them in tabs with :tab all (or you can use :argdo tabe).

Answer 4

The other answers will not work if you have subdirectories. If you need to open all files in all subdirectories you can use command substitution:

vim `find . -type f`

If you want to ignore files in subdirectories write:

vim `find . -type f -depth 1`

You can, of course, get as fancy as you want using the find command.

Answer 5

Edit all files using a given pattern:

vim `find . -name "*your*pattern*here*"`

Super useful when I do this:

vim `find . -name "*.go"`

Answer 6

durum's answer is incomplete. To open all files in the directory without opening files in subdirectories, use this:

vim `find . -maxdepth 1 -type f`