CODEWITHSUNDEEP
vimcommand-linegrepvi
13ren
13ren

Reputation: 12187

in vim, how to set "args" to the result of a "grep -l"?

To illustrate, here's how to do it from the command-line:

vim `grep "hello" * -Rl`

This opens vim with all the files that have "hello" in them (-l gives the filenames alone). I want to do the same thing, but from within vim. Conceptually, something like this (which doesn't work):

:args !grep "hello" * -Rl

I'm open to completely different approaches to achieve this; I'd just like it to be on one line (so it's easy to edit and redo).

The answer is to simply use backticks - but with a key proviso! The below does not work for me, because of the quotes around hello:

:args `grep "hello" * -Rl`

But it works if I remove them or escape the quotes:

:args `grep hello * -Rl`
:args `grep \"hello\" * -Rl`

(this was buried in the comments after chaos' answer - I added them here to make them more visible, in case anyone else had this problem)

Upvotes: 13

Views: 4160

Answers (2)

chaos
chaos

Reputation: 124317

Well, this works for me:

:args `grep -Rl "hello" *`

Running vim 7.0.305.

Upvotes: 9

Bill Karwin
Bill Karwin

Reputation: 562498

Try the args command:

:ar[gs] `grep -Rl "hello" .`

If the backticks aren't working for you, are you use you're using a current version of vim?

:version

Upvotes: 3

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