open files in vim through xargs modification

Question

Using a discovery command utility I can grep the location of some directories, and I need to open containing files. I cannot use find with exec such as this example find . -name "*.txt" -exec vim {} +.

If I don't modify the grep output, xargs works as this

searchUtilityCommand | grep keyword | xargs vim

But I actually need

searchUtilityCommand | grep keyword | xargs -I % vim %/extra/path

However, when doing that it opens the first hit, and after I close it opens the second; close it and open the third... I tried using

searchUtilityCommand | grep keyword | xargs -P 0 -I % vim %/extra/path

But it just fails. I also tried

vim `searchUtilityCommand | grep keyword | xargs -P 0 -I % vim %/extra/path`

No luck.

I thought awk or sed could be used, but I am not fluent with them and I dont know if its worth it. It could be something like

searchUtilityCommand | grep keyword | <awk modify grepped path> | xargs vim

Any help.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Have not tested this, but no reason it should not work:

searchUtilityCommand | grep keyword | sed -e 's,$,/extra/path' | xargs vim

I have to say though, I don't know how to get rid of the "Warning: Input is not from a terminal" message that comes up when you run vim like this. (I generally prefer vim $(command pipeline) for that reason).

Answer 2

From Vim, run this Ex command:

:args `=systemlist('searchUtilityCommand | awk ''/keyword/{print $0 "/extra/path"}''')`

Or this one:

:args `=map(filter(systemlist('searchUtilityCommand'), {_,v -> v =~# 'keyword'}), {_,v -> v.'/extra/path'})`

This should populate the arglist with a list of file paths; the ones output by searchUtilityCommand, matching keyword, with /extra/path appended at the end.

From there you can do all sort of things, such as:

" open each file in a horizontal split (run `:only` to close all splits except the current one)
:all

" open each file in a vertical split
:vert all

" open each file in a tab page (run `:tabonly` to close all tab pages except the current one)
:tab all

" diff all the files
:vert all | windo diffthis

" replace all occurrences of `pat` with `rep` in each file
:argdo %s/pat/rep/g | update

For more information, see:

:h `=
:h systemlist(
:h map(
:h filter(
:h :all
:h :argdo