4.6.12. Passing multiple files to external tool

Sometimes you may want to pass multiple files to an external tool, especially when these multiple files are part of some project and the external tool is a compiler that compiles this project.

Usually some makefile is created for these purposes, and the path to the makefile is passed to the compiler.

But let's imagine we don't want to use a makefile and want to use NppExec's script for this. Let's say we want NppExec's script to look through the files opened in Notepad++ and create a list of files with a given file extension.

For example, the following NppExec's scripts collects all the opened files with .cpp extension and outputs them to NppExec's Console:

npp_console local -        // disable output to the Console
set local MatchExt = .cpp  // file extension to match
set local FileList =       // output file list
set local i = 1

// iterating through all opened files...
:NextOpenedFile
set local file = $(#$(i))  // full path name
if "$(file)" == "" goto OutOfOpenedFiles
set local n ~ strrfind "$(file)" \
if n == -1 then
  set local n ~ strrfind "$(file)" /
endif
if n != -1 then
  set local n ~ $(n) + 1
  set local file ~ substr $(n) - $(file)  // file name (without path)
endif
set local n ~ strrfind "$(file)" .
if n != -1 then
  set local e ~ substr $(n) - $(file)  // file extension
  if "$(e)" ~= "$(MatchExt)" then      // compare case-insensitively
    set local FileList = $(FileList) "$(file)"
  endif
endif
set local i ~ $(i) + 1
goto NextOpenedFile

:OutOfOpenedFiles
npp_console local +  // enable output to the Console
echo $(FileList)

If your project consists of a lot of files, including files in subfolders, we may form a list of all these files using some additional tool such as Swiss File Knife ( https://sourceforge.net/projects/swissfileknife/files/ ).

Here is how Swiss File Knife (sfk) creates a list of all .cpp files starting from the current directory:

sfk list -quot -dir . -file .cpp +xed "/[xwhite]/ /"

Then, using sfk, the NppExec's script will look like the following:

npp_console local -        // disable output to the Console
set local MatchExt = .cpp  // file extension to match

npe_console local v+
sfk list -quot -dir . -file $(MatchExt) +xed "/[xwhite]/ /"
set local FileList = $(OUTPUTL)

npp_console local +  // enable output to the Console
echo $(FileList)

The only thing remaining is to call your compiler passing the $(FileList) to it. For example:

g++ -c $(FileList)