:help c_CTRL-A
Insert all args of the current command that match the pattern.
I don't know if this is a good example, but let's assume we want to activate all boolean Vim options that start with
show*. This example has only the purpose to demo that it works per ex-command. Hint - for the Vim options that require a
parameter value only their current setting gets printed, in this example showbreak and showtabline.
The next example is more useful. Opening multiple files at once using a recursive wildcard and a name wildcard.
We have the following fake folder structure with some TXT and SVG files. And we want to open all TXT files that start
with the letter a.
The command we could execute is ...
:argadd demodir/**/a*txt<CR>
... but maybe you want to expand the matches first so that you can check them or modify them. So instead of hitting
<CR> right away, you press <C-a> to insert all matches of the pattern before the cursor.
:argadd demodir/**/a*txt<C-a>
