Mastering Vim

Recursive macros

Earlier we ran macros multiple times by prefixing @ with a number. That's not very computer science-like, and we can do better.

Vim supports recursive macros, but there are a few quirks to be aware of.

First, you'll need to make sure the register you will be recording to is empty. You can do this by entering macro recording mode, and immediately exiting it. For instance, if you wanted to empty register b, you'll run qbq to clear it.

Then, record your macro as usual, and insert that same register into itself (for example, by using @b).

Let's say we wanted to swap keys with values in a Python dictionary:

animal_noises = {    'bark': 'dog',    'meow': 'cat',    'silence': 'dogfish',}

We could record a macro as follows, starting with ...