I truly love vim, a my first blog post I can not think of a better subject to talk about. A few was I use vim as a time saving tool are the below.
Vim Windows and Tabs
I administer several Nagios servers where I may need to open four or five host files and make a few quick changes. At times I use sed scripts but more often I open all the files with vim in vertical windows suing the following.vim -o webserver0{1..5}.cfg
-o opens each file in stacked windows.
-O opens each file in side by side windows.
-p opens each file in its' own tab.
Then you can use regex replacments across all tabs or windows using windo or tabdo. A nice use of this is changing all http checks to https for webserver01-5. This change can be done suing the followind command.
:windo %s /check_http/check_https:g
To only make the change on your active window omit windo. In order to cycle through windows use ctfl+w w to move down a window or ctrl+w W to move up a window. All windows can be closed and saved using windo as well.
:windo x
If you are using tabs rather then windows tabdo can be used in place of windo. Using :tabn and :tabp to cycle the the next or prior tabs.
