Vim macros

Let’s face it - vim is awesome! If you don’t think so, you can stop reading. Because today’s post is on a useful little feature called macro.

I usually use macros whenever I have to make changes that are hard to do with regular expressions. And it’s that simple:

• Hit q in the normal mode followed by the name of the macro, for example a
• Do whatever you would like the macro to do, for example go to the beginning of the line, add a word, jump over the next word and add XYZ
• In normal mode type q again - the macro is now stored

@a replays the macro. If you want to replay it more than once, type <nr of times>@a as with every other vim command (for example “20@a”).

Happy viming!