How to effectively work with multiple files in Vim

Question

I\'ve started using Vim to develop Perl scripts and am starting to find it very powerful.

One thing I like is to be able to open multiple files at once with:

<

Answer 1

Listing

To see a list of current buffers, I use:

:ls

---

Opening

To open a new file, I use

:e ../myFile.pl

with enhanced tab completion (put set wildmenu in your .vimrc).

Note: you can also use :find which will search a set of paths for you, but you need to customize those paths first.

---

Switching

To switch between all open files, I use

:b myfile

with enhanced tab completion (still set wildmenu).

Note: :b# chooses the last visited file, so you can use it to switch quickly between two files.

---

Using windows

Ctrl-W s and Ctrl-W v to split the current window horizontally and vertically. You can also use :split and :vertical split (:sp and :vs)

Ctrl-W w to switch between open windows, and Ctrl-W h (or j or k or l) to navigate through open windows.

Ctrl-W c to close the current window, and Ctrl-W o to close all windows except the current one.

Starting vim with a -o or -O flag opens each file in its own split.

---

With all these I don't need tabs in Vim, and my fingers find my buffers, not my eyes.

Note: if you want all files to go to the same instance of Vim, start Vim with the --remote-silent option.