Practical Vim

Chapter 11Macros

Vim offers more than one way to repeat changes. We’ve already learned about the dot command, which is useful for repeating small changes. But when we want to repeat anything more substantial, we should reach for Vim’s macros. Using these, we can record any number of keystrokes into a register and then play them back.

Macros are ideal for repeating changes over a set of similar lines, paragraphs, or even files. We’ll discover that there are two ways of executing a macro across a set of targets—playing it back in series or running it multiple times in parallel—and we’ll learn when to use each one.

When recording a sequence of commands, there’s always the chance that we’ll make a mistake. But we needn’t discard a bad take. ...