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---
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
|
