How to delete multiple buffers in Vim

buffervim

Assuming I have multiple files opened as buffers in Vim. The files have *.cpp, *.h and some are *.xml. I want to close all the XML files with :bd *.xml. However, Vim does not allow this (E93: More than one match…).

Is there any way to do this?

P.S. I know that :bd file1 file2 file3 works. So can I somehow evaluate *.xml to file1.xml file2.xml file3.xml?

Best Answer

You can use <C-a> to complete all matches. So if you type :bd *.xml and then hit <C-a>, vim will complete the command to :bd file1.xml file2.xml file3.xml.

Use `\r` instead of `\n`.

Substituting by \n inserts a null character into the text. To get a newline, use \r. When searching for a newline, you’d still use \n, however. This asymmetry is due to the fact that \n and \r do slightly different things:

\n matches an end of line (newline), whereas \r matches a carriage return. On the other hand, in substitutions \n inserts a null character whereas \r inserts a newline (more precisely, it’s treated as the input CR). Here’s a small, non-interactive example to illustrate this, using the Vim command line feature (in other words, you can copy and paste the following into a terminal to run it). xxd shows a hexdump of the resulting file.

echo bar > test
(echo 'Before:'; xxd test) > output.txt
vim test '+s/b/\n/' '+s/a/\r/' +wq
(echo 'After:'; xxd test) >> output.txt
more output.txt

Before:
0000000: 6261 720a                                bar.
After:
0000000: 000a 720a                                ..r.

In other words, \n has inserted the byte 0x00 into the text; \r has inserted the byte 0x0a.

Best Answer

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Use \r instead of \n.

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Use `\r` instead of `\n`.