Macro

Editing Macros

Sometimes people ask me “what’s the point of macros in Vim?” I think of macros as repeatable complex commands: they’re a lot like functions. I find them indispensable due to the fact you can easily manipulate them as strings, pulling them in and out of registers at will.

Repeat Side-Effects

I’m writing a book in an XML format derived from DocBook, and I often have to deal with repeated lines of XML with incremented numbers:

<callout arearefs="co1">Here be dragons.</callout>

Practical: Joining and Splitting Text

The J (:help J) command is the kind of thing that seems suboptimal when initially learning Vim, but I find I use it with surprising regularity:

Join [count] lines, with a minimum of two lines. Remove the indent and insert up to two spaces…

Terminology: Macro

In general terms, a macro is a reusable set of instructions. Intermediate and advanced Vim users use “complex repeats” to record typed characters into registers, then play back the register’s contents later on. Most of us refer to complex repeats as macros, but Vim’s documentation calls key…

Vim 101: A Gentle Introduction to Macros

You’re working hard, and it’s been a long day. You glance at the clock: 13:59. Is it still that early? Rushing to finish the latest bug fix, you accidentally hit some keys, then Vim displays an ominous message:

recording