RT @http://superuser.com/questions/22455/vim-what-is-the-ex-mode-for-batch-processing-for

Ex-Mode is mostly for performing the same action on a number of files. Say you have 25 .html files all with:

<a href="/home.html"> ...

Instead of opening each one of those, you could use Ex-mode to change it all to index.html:

vim -E -s bob.html <<-EOF
	%substitute/home.html/index.html/
	update
	quit
EOF

PS @http://tinyurl.com/2f7dpgg

> also, make sure that last "eof" begins at the first column. If it
> doesn't, the "here doc" won't recegnize it.

You should really quote some relevant text from the previous post…

Also, the “eof” marker in a heredoc does NOT have to start in the first column,
if you use this syntax, leading tabs will be stripped:

some_command <<-eof
    blah
    blah
    blah
eof

Note the “-e” after the “«”…

Kevin