Question

When modifying code I find I often have to go through dozens of files to change the simplest of things. For example lets say I have a function pretty_print and I change it to conform to camel case prettyPrint. Now I want to go through the files apple1.js to apple99.js, and possibly a few orange.js files in there. Is there a quick way to do this in Vim?

NOTE: this is not something I can automate, I actually need to go in and modify the code myself.

I know I can do :b <fileName>, but, although it supports name completion/pattern matching, I don’t think the pattern is carried over.

For example, if I do

:b apple*.js

and I hit tab, I’ll get

:b apple1.js

but if I revisit that function (either by pressing : + upArrow or q:) then if I hit tab it won’t go to

:b apple2.js

What I want is to specify something like

:b apple*.js

edit the file, then when I type :w, it moves to the next buffer. I would prefer to stay in Vim, I don’t want to come out, type vim apple*.js, go back into Vim and then use the :x command. I realize this works, but I still need all the other files in case I want to, for example jump between tags.

Answer 1

Probably the most suitable solution for you in this case would be to use the
grep capabilities integrated in Vim. The following command performs a search
for the pattern \<pretty_print\> in files matching the wildcard apple*.js,
and stores locations of the pattern’s occurrences in the quickfix list
allowing to easily jump through all the matches.

:vimgrep /\<pretty_print\>/ apple*.js

For more detailed introduction into the quickfix list with regard to searching
in files, see my answer to the question “Loading a set of files obtained
via cmd-exec into Vim buffers“.

If you would like to simply open a list of files matching a particular
wildcard, load that files’ names into the argument list

:args apple*.js

and then navigate between them using :n and :N, as usual.