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Working with tabs

#8

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This episode covers the essential commands for working with Vim’s tab pages: opening and closing, switching, and moving them.

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Opening & closing tabs

The following commands are useful for opening and closing tabs.

command action
:tabe[dit] filename Open filename in a new tab
ctrl-W T Move current split window into its own tab
:q Close window, closing tab if it contains a single window
:tabc[lose] Close the current tab page and all its windows
:tabo[nly] Close all tabs apart from the current one

Switching tabs

When you have multiple tabs open, you can switch between them using the mouse, or the following commands:

command action
gt Move to next tab
gT Move to previous tab
#gt Move to tab number #

I’m accustomed to the tab switching shortcuts of Firefox, so to port these into my Vim environment, I include the following in my .vimrc:

" For mac users (using the 'apple' key)
map <D-S-]> gt
map <D-S-[> gT
map <D-1> 1gt
map <D-2> 2gt
map <D-3> 3gt
map <D-4> 4gt
map <D-5> 5gt
map <D-6> 6gt
map <D-7> 7gt
map <D-8> 8gt
map <D-9> 9gt
map <D-0> :tablast<CR>

" for linux and windows users (using the control key)
map <C-S-]> gt
map <C-S-[> gT
map <C-1> 1gt
map <C-2> 2gt
map <C-3> 3gt
map <C-4> 4gt
map <C-5> 5gt
map <C-6> 6gt
map <C-7> 7gt
map <C-8> 8gt
map <C-9> 9gt
map <C-0> :tablast<CR>

Rearranging tabs

In MacVim, you can rearrange tabs by dragging and dropping them with the mouse. The following commands can be used in Terminal Vim:

command action
:tabmove Move current tab to the end
:tabmove 0 Move current tab to the beginning
:tabmove 1 Move current tab to become the 2nd tab
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