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author | Kenny Ballou <kballou@devnulllabs.io> | 2018-01-31 17:11:49 -0700 |
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committer | Kenny Ballou <kballou@devnulllabs.io> | 2018-08-19 08:13:47 -0600 |
commit | f72f986c2d61e2027c221498a4ce82b4579157c4 (patch) | |
tree | 229797cb934ae843903ed0ac8b9fd5fda087fce2 /content | |
parent | bb50d766f7a866538961bca7ed262375a0e3ffd0 (diff) | |
download | blog.kennyballou.com-f72f986c2d61e2027c221498a4ce82b4579157c4.tar.gz blog.kennyballou.com-f72f986c2d61e2027c221498a4ce82b4579157c4.tar.xz |
vim-tips-2015-05-07 post conversion
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diff --git a/content/blog/vim_tips_2015_05_07.markdown b/content/blog/vim_tips_2015_05_07.markdown deleted file mode 100644 index a00c2b6..0000000 --- a/content/blog/vim_tips_2015_05_07.markdown +++ /dev/null @@ -1,141 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: "Vim Tips 2015-05-07" -description: "Vim Tips: Visual Mode and Macros" -tags: - - "Vim" - - "Tips and Tricks" - - "Editors" -date: "2015-05-07" -categories: - - "Development" - - "Editors" - - "Tools" -slug: "vim-tips-2015-05-7" ---- - -Many Vim users may have, accidentally or not, discovered the dot (`.`) command -in Vim. It's a main stay for a lot of Vim users and is clearly one of those -actions that should be in more editors. Except when it is the wrong action for -the job. - -More often than not, the visual selection mode and one-off macros are a better -choice. - -## Visual Mode ## - -I won't go into all of the cool things that can be accomplished with Vim's -visual mode, but I will showcase a few examples where the visual editor is -clearly a better choice than the dot (`.`). - -Visual mode offers, in essence, a multi-line cursor for which you can do a lot -of changes, quickly. - -### Visual Mode Basics ### - -To enter visual mode, it is as simple as pressing `^v` or `ctrl-v`. Next you -will want to select what you want to change with your typical movement commands -(`h`, `j`, `k`, `l`, and of course `w`, `e` and all the rest). Finally, you -finish with the action: `I` if you want to insert before the selection, `A` if -you want to append after the selection, `C` if you want to change the -selection, and `d`, `D`, `x` if you want to remove the selection, just to name -a few. - -### Some Examples ### - -For (a bad) example, if you need to comment out a contiguous set of lines, you -can easily accomplish this with the visual mode. - -{{< video "/media/videos/comment.ogg" "video/ogg" 600 400 >}} - -A related example to prefixing is indentation changes, I often use the visual -mode to fix code indentation when changing block-level indentation or when -copying code into a markdown file. - -{{< video "/media/videos/indent.ogg" "video/ogg" 600 400 >}} - -As another example, if you need to change a single word in multiple columns, -visual mode will make easy work of this (especially when the columns are -aligned, if not see macros below or [substitution ranges][2] from the previous -tip). - -{{< video "/media/videos/cw.ogg" "video/ogg" 600 400 >}} - -For more information on Visual Mode, you can check Vim's [visual][1] help -document. - -## Macros ## - -For when visual mode may not be enough or when the change is repetitive in -operations but not in columns or what have you, it's time to bust out the -macros. Vim macros are easily available for use you can use all the registers -to record and store each macro. - -### Macro Basics ### - -To record a macro, it's as simple as `q<register-label><commands>q`. That is, -press `q`, select a register (a-z1-0), enter your commands as if you were using -Vim normally, and finally `q` again to finish. Once your macro is recorded, you -can use it with `@<register-label>`. And, like most Vim commands, you can -attach a repetition to it: `<n>@<register-label>` where `<n>` is the number of -times to repeat the command. - -You can also replay the last macro with `@@`. - -### Some Examples ### - -As a simplistic example, we can use a macro to convert it into, say, JSON (this -example is clearly taken from the [Vim Wikia][3]). - -Let's say we have the following data: - - one first example - two second example - three third example - four fourth example - -And we want to change it to the following: - - data = { - 'one': 'first example', - 'two': 'second example', - 'three': 'third example', - 'four': 'fourth example', - } - -We can do this by performing the following: - -First, we want to start recording our macro. While the cursor is under the 'o' -of 'one', we will press `qd` to record our macro to the `d` register. - -Next, we will want to change the tabbing by performing a substitution: - - :s/\s\+/': ' - -Then, we will insert our first tick with: - - I' - -And append the last tick and comma with: - - A', - -Before we finish recording, one of the more important operations of making -macros repeatable is moving the cursor to the next line and putting it into the -correct position for the next execution. Therefore, move the cursor the begging -of the line and move down one line: - - 0j - -Finally, press `q` to finish recording. - -We should now be able to press `3@d` and watch as the rest of the lines change. - -To finish up the example, we'll manually enter `data = {` and the tailing `}`. - -{{< video "/media/videos/macros.ogg" "video/ogg" 600 400 >}} - -[1]: http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/visual.html - -[2]: https://kennyballou.com/blog/2015/03/vim-tips-2015-03-17/ - -[3]: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Macros |