Batching shell commands with Vim

Many default shell commands lack elegant implementations for working with multiple files. The typical workaround is to pipe ls to the standard input of an intermediate command, which effectively converts the list of filenames to a one-time shell script. While not optimal. This workflow does enable some interesting manipulations via Vim.

Example: renaming files

Suppose you have a group of markdown files in a directory with spaces in the filenames.…

\ls *.md | vim -

\ls runs the default ls regardless of any aliases you may have. This ensures clean output. vim - opens vim with the standard input. The result will be a new vim buffer with a list of filenames as plain text:

a file with spaces in the name.md
another file.md
why would anyone use spaces in filenames.md

Now you may manipulate the filenames to create a list of shell commands. For example, you may use block selection and substitution to create the following.

mv a\ file\ with\ spaces\ in\ the\ name.md              a-file-with-spaces-in-the-name.md
mv another\ file.md                                     another-file.md
mv why\ would\ anyone\ use\ spaces\ in\ filenames.md    why-would-anyone-use-spaces-in-filenames.md

Finally, to run these commands line by line run the following Vim command.

:w !sh