When vim is given 500 file arguments, it opens only the first one. Regarding the other 499 files, it just remembers the names, for the beginning, so you see the first tfile very quicky. Only when you explicitly visit/open some of the other files, vim will actually read its contents. Just try it out. It works fast.
That sounds great but how to deal with dreadful "too many arguments" bash error? Using something like "$ find -type f -name '*.txt' | xargs vim --remote"?
Yakov
-- Best regards, Pavel
