Just to share the joy of vim, which is the vi loaded with many distros. I had to edit about 30 documents, converted from .doc via staroffice to text files. StarOffice did the conversion perfectly. Each had a similar format as .doc files, and I needed to make changes in the newly created text files so that they could be converted into html files of a particular format. In the past, I had to edit each file individually, or run sed scripts from the command line, which always involved a big hassle in saving the new file to a different name, then moving them back again.
Now, I find that the command vi *.txt loads all 30 documents at once. There are a few commands for handling multiple files at one time which we all should know: buf! BufferID switches to the buffer desired. You can use the buffer number or the first, unique part of the file name. :buf! MyFi or :buf! 2 :ls lists them all :bufdo! runs a command on all of them, for example: :bufdo! 1,$ ! sed "s/PATTERN/REPLACE/" If you have a complicated sed script: :bufdo! 1,$ ! sed -f script This is really magic. If you mess up, a very likely occurrence: :bufdo! u changes everything back. You can try out the sed command or script on just one document, then use the :bufdo! command to run it against them all. :wall saves everything. :help buffers is very useful. Navigate all the links in help with CNTRL-] Enjoy. Joel _______________________________________________ Linux-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc -> http://smtp.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
