Vim: replace text in all opened buffers with only one command

Vim: do you need to replace some text in all opened buffers?

Do You need to perform a substitution between two words or text fragments in all opened buffers?

The first option is to open all the buffers and perform a search with substitution in each of them.

The search and replace string will look like the one below, where foo will be the data element to be replaced and bar will be the replaced data element.

%s/foo/bar/g

The letter g at the end of the string determines the global substitution avoiding the acceptance for each replaced element.

Vim: is it possible to perform the operation with a single command?

The one previously illustrated is already a good system, but you can do better: you can replace all items in all documents opened in Vim with a single command.

The command is as follows:

:bufdo %s/foo/bar/g | w

Basically, the bufdo command extends the operation to all open buffers. The name itself is mnemonic from: buffer do, meaning to do in every buffer.

The vertical bar visible at the end of the formula constitutes a command argument that launches, after each buffer has completed the substitutions, the command placed to the right of the bar.

In this situation, the command placed to the right is the letter w which writes (write), i.e., saves, the respective buffers.

If the vertical bar were not present, only the last buffer processed would be saved.

Thank you for your attention

Originally published at https://francopasut.netlify.app

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