Vim Macros

According to redhat a vim macro is:

a feature that allows you to record a sequence of commands that you use to perform a given task. You then execute that macro many times to repeat the same job in an automated way.

Simple and elegant, vim macros let you quickly automate tedious tasks.

How to Record A Macro

Recording a macro involves saving a series of commands to a register (type: :help registers in vim to understand what they are).

To record a macro and save it to a register you enter (in command mode) q followed by any valid register. A popular register to save to is q. It's as easy as:

qq

Vim will record any key presses until you type q in command mode again.

Let's go through an example.

Creating a List of Lists

I had the task of turning a list of commands and their descriptions into a list of lists so I could use them in a Python script. Tedious. Sounds like a job for vim macros.

I formatted the first entry and recorded a macro into register q with the following key presses:

0jddi<80>kb, ^[0i"^[<80><fd>af,i"^[wi"^[A"],^[0i[^[

Wow that's ugly. If you type :registers after recording your macros you can see what key presses correspond to that register. This was what was in my register after formatting the first item. A lot of these are escape characters, for instance ^] represents escape.

I'll leave it to the reader to map them back to what I pressed below.

Once I had done this first item, I selected everything below and typed:

:normal @q

This applies the macro to my selection.

Boom. The whole list is formatted how I need it to be.

This may seem like overkill, but if this were thousands of entries it would of saved me a lot of time.

Permanent Macros

What I just showed you is ephemeral. The macro disappears once you close the window. What about if you wanted a macro to persist across sessions? Well you can.

You can open up your .vimrc — wherever it lays — and define your macros there in the format

let @register = 'macro contents'

Here are a couple I use and why.

Navigating Quotes

I find myself on a certain type of line a lot. A line where I want to jump straight inside the quotes and delete everything in it. So I defined a macro to do this in register q (for quotes).

let @q = '0f"di"'

Navigating Ticks

The same for ticks saved to the conveniently lettered register t (for ticks).

let @t = "0f'di'"

Once I started using these I could not go back to my inefficient ways! Be awesome. Use vim macros.

EDIT: I can't believe I created macros to navigate ticks and quotes when vim.targets¹ exists.