Practical Vim, 2nd Edition

Tip 67

Play Back with a Count

The Dot Formula can be an efficient editing strategy for a small number of repeats, but it can’t be executed with a count. Overcome this limitation by recording a cheap one-off macro and playing it back with a count.

In Tip 3, we used the Dot Formula to transform this:

the_vim_way/3_concat.js

var foo = "method("+argument1+","+argument2+")";

What we want is for it to look like this:

var foo = "method(" + argument1 + "," + argument2 + ")";

The Dot Formula meant that we could complete the task simply by repeating ;. a few times. What if we faced the same problem but on a larger scale?

x = "("+a+","+b+","+c+","+d+","+e+")";

We can approach this in exactly the same way. But when ...