Can you mass edit all files returned in a grep?

I want to mass-edit a ton of files that are returned in a grep. (I know, I should get better at sed).

So if I do:

grep -rnI 'xg_icon-*'

How do I pipe all of those files into vi?

The easiest way is to have grep return just the filenames (-l instead of -n) that match the pattern. Run that in a subshell and feed the results to Vim.

vim $(grep -rIl 'xg_icon-*' *)

A nice general solution to this is to use xargs to convert a stdout from a process like grep to an argument list.

A la:

grep -rIl 'xg_icon-*' | xargs vi

if you use vim and the -p option, it will open each file in a tab, and you can switch between them using gt or gT, or even the mouse if you have mouse support in the terminal

You can do it without any processing of the grep output! This will even enable you to go the the right line (using :help quickfix commands, eg. :cn or :cw). So, if you are using bash or zsh:

vim -q <(grep foo *.c)

if what you want to edit is similar across all files, then no point using vi to do it manually. (although vi can be scripted as well), hypothetically, it looks something like this, since you never mention what you want to edit

grep -rnI 'xg_icon-*' | while read FILE
do
    sed -i.bak 's/old/new/g' $FILE # (or other editing commands, eg awk... )
done

vi `grep -l -i findthisword *`