bufdo and tabs

[Roy Fulbright]

I'm using gvim 7.3.600 on Windows 7.
 
I have three files opened in tabs (tab1=a.txt, tab2=b.txt, tab3=c.txt).
All three files contain the string 'abc'.
 
When I use :bufdo :%s/abc/def/ I get message E37: No write since last
change (add ! to override).
 
When I use :bufdo! :%s/abc/def/ all files are changed, but
now tab1 and tab3 both contain c.txt. What happened to a.txt in tab1?
 
If I do :wa then exit and look at the files, all three files are changed.
It's tab1 displaying the same file as tab3 after the :bufdo! that's puzzling.
 
Is this a bug or am I missing something regarding bufdo and tabs?
 
Thanks.

[Marcin Szamotulski]

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I think this is expected. The bufdo command does the job in the current
window, and the last file it operates on is the c.txt. Thus it will
leave it in the current window (see :help bufdo). To avoid the E37
error you can also use:
set hidden

Best,
Marcin

[Ben Fritz]

It's not a bug. I think you may be missing something regarding windows, tabs, and buffers. http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Buffers has a nice overview.

It sounds like you expect bufdo to operate on all TABS in your Vim, rather than all BUFFERS, and you just happen to have a single window open in each tab with a different buffer in each case. The :tabdo command will be close to what you want but if you have multiple windows in a tab or a tab with a duplicate buffer it still may do something unexpected. If you know you have exactly one window per tab with a unique buffer in each window, there will be no problem.

You can also open up a tab containing all open buffers and run a windo on that tab:

:tabnew
:sball
:windo WhateverCommandYouWant

[Roy Fulbright]

 

> Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2012 06:31:37 -0800
> From: fritzo...@gmail.com
> To: vim...@googlegroups.com
> Subject: Re: bufdo and tabs

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Thanks for the quick response. The :tabdo command is what I needed.