Intro to Vim Macros

#short #shorts #neovim #programming #vim

[@devlinbowman5251]

You can make your macros recursive by calling the assigned register during recording. Eg; qw + the things you want + @w +q to stop recording. This way the macro calls itself on completion.

[@QckSGaming]

But when does it stop?

[@devlinbowman5251]

@@QckSGaming Usually at EOF. But, experimenting with this, I’ve found it can do some funky things in certain situations. The proper course of action would usually be to make file wide changes via a command, which is both operationally faster and computationally safer, but sometimes you’ve set up a good macro and decide you’d rather get a cup of coffee than repeat the last 30 keystrokes. However, upon further consideration of your question, I should probably look at the documentation to be sure don’t this isn’t an issue.

[@ocaly]

​@@devlinbowman5251 wait why would you want this you can "69420@w" to do the same. Recursion sounds dangerous, what if it deletes everything and you want to undo..?

[@SayfSentinel]

There is no need to go down then at the beginning of the line You can just escape then enter it will put you at the beginning of the line

[@vikingthedude]

I like to imagine that vim has all these weird features whose documentation only exists in discussion forums and comment sections

[@ghun131]

This is black magic, the dark art I want to learn

[@scally9341]

holy shit never even looked into what the recording q thing is. legend.

[@bashbunni]

Guys, of course you can use visual block mode for this, I’m just showing the most basic example of macros in under 60s. Cmon 😂

[@maxz999]

I had a realization at the end of this clip… I have been calling my macros repeatedly one by one for far too long now. Don’t know why I didn’t notice this earlier.

[@paulgupta2454]

sometimes it's nice to just bash '.' repeatedly one after another.

[@TheKuhtaMusic]

yeah, I have been doing @@ repeatedly as well. Thanks for showing this!

[@theodorealenas3171]

Today Vim macros helped me a lot. :e /tmp/a :.!ls -1 And then I recorded a macro. This /tmp/a file now contained a list of files. The macro would use that list to jump to a file, call another macro, and come back. I wanted to remove the header and footer from all the HTML files of a directory. Then I wanted to do another operation to all the files, so I kept the outer macro and changed the inner. It was an adventure. The context of why I wanted to do it was terrible, but doing it was fun.

[@QuantPhilosopher89]

You can do the same with visual block mode: ctrl + V, then go down to whatever line you want to insert content into, then type an I, then start typing and click ESC once you're done.

[@hamm8934]

You can also use ctrl + v to highlight the first character of each line and then do shift + i. Type in your bullet points. Hit esc, and then bam you have your check list. I need to play around with macros for sure though

[@alacritty]

Thanks for the tip! Very fast and simple.

[@brendencallahan242]

ctrl + q if you happen to be on windows (even wsl2) (this only affects the windows terminal not other terminals or guis)

[@hamm8934]

@@brendencallahan242 maybe you have remapped ctrl + v in your config, ctrl +v works for me both on windows and Unix

[@brendencallahan242]

@@hamm8934 Nope. It's from the 'new' windows terminal. If you are using a different terminal or a gui it won't affect you. I tried to link a so thread but KZbin deleted the comment.

[@hamm8934]

@@brendencallahan242 oh interesting, thanks for the info. I use Windows Terminal at work instead of the built in command line of power shell so I must have incidentally avoided the conflict

[@ProjectileGrommet]

Relative line numbering is perfect for this

[@bashbunni]

I will not!!1!

[@eamonburns9597]

Yeah, it's great. Although, depending on how you record the macro, you can get "off-by-one errors" if you go by the literal numbers. Just something to be aware of

[@anthonydesouza9983]

Macros stop if they can’t go further, so just do 100@q and it will stop after “j” can’t go to the next line.

[@eamonburns9597]

@@anthonydesouza9983 that only helps if the section you are trying to change is at the end of the file, which, most of the time, it isn't

[@alacritty]

Love these shorts and learning more and more about vim

[@Rh0mbus]

This is awesome, great example and I can already see how ridiculous the potential is

[@wesleychaffin4029]

This was a helpful lil intro to a vim macro! Thanks!

[@Redyf]

I love your videos, thank you for sharing these tips!

[@GabeKMusic]

tip: + moves down a line and moves your cursor to the first char. saves a key press compared to j0

[@jacderida]

Wow, nice! Been using nvim/vim since ~2014 and I never came across this before.

[@Jag3rm3ist3r]

I - [ ] j You don't need to move to the start of the line if you jump there when you switch to insert mode.

[@theMRcapitanBANANA]

This has to be the best thing ever, I didn’t even knew it was posible!

[@ascourter]

Macros have been on my list for awhile. Thanks for the great intro!

[@MilanGunasekera]

Another useful way to do this could be by using a Visual Block . When in this mode, key down to the bottom with G, then press "I" to enter insert mode. You can then insert the - [ ] and exit back to normal mode with ESC

[@TheGrouchDnD]

Saving this for when I inevitably need this

[@ilyeshammadi7278]

Nice. A much nicer way to avoid adding the j will be to use parallel macros with :3,8norm @w without including the j when recording the macro

[@Al-ws7cn]

After all this time of ignoring whatever this recording feature is I finally learn it, my life is complete. Amazing vid.

[@romanferguson4032]

my mind has exploded

[@JayJay-rk2xx]

😮 I'm in awe

[@Steliosgiannatos]

Vim is so powerful, but daunting to start.

[@celestialbeing4767]

Mad cool

[@juanmacias5922]

Macro-mazing!

[@maxwebstudio]

Nice one

[@js-ny2ru]

That was so cool! Thx Bunni :)

[@emanuelavilesarchivado]

i love it! 😎❣️

[@zicraftian]

That is just so cool! I had no idea vim had a feature like this!

[@kitti.crafts]

❤It helped me a lot.

[@samdelamarter4557]

Great content! Really like this style of short.🐰🧡

[@n0kodoko143]

In the words of Prime "macro pressure!"

[@FakeDumbDummy]

hell yeah

[@buttface6t4]

this was super helpful

[@user-xd5gd4pc9h]

Cool!😁

[@HomeAlbadawi]

Thanks this video was helpful

[@Yupppi]

Thanks, I've been learning and constantly hitting recording accidentally and wondering how to use it.

[@yuvrajpawar4177]

Loved your video with the legend Telescopic TJ♥️. Please try DWM as well you will love it. Absolute respect for your programming abilities ♥️

[@c1dk1n]

Love your work

[@lebenebou]

instead of adding j0 to the end of the macro, you can visually select the lines you want to execute on, and type the command :normal @w it will run the macro on the selected lines

[@aquepaique]

ctrl-v + G + I + *insert mode* - [ ]

[@fuzzy-02]

*faith restored* Cute video.

[@stuckoverflaws]

very helpful! thanks

[@vikingthedude]

As someone who’s been using vim for about 2weeks now I definitely needed to hear about macros

[@vikingthedude]

As someone who’s been using vim for 5months now, I definitely consider macros my bread and butter

[@samarthnagar2939]

Ad someone who is using vim for an year it definitely usefull to learn about macros

[@jsm33t]

As someone who will use vim someday this will be helpful

[@vikingthedude]

As someone whose been using vim for a year now, i do think macros are goated

[@sidiqalfiansyah9321]

thanks

[@j1d7s]

Thanks for the video! I understand that for the short time available you could not show a more complicated macro. But just as @Hamm said, this example would have been the perfect use case for using block mode. So anyone trying out macros for the first time, still check if another way of doing it is easier / faster!

[@connemignonne]

there's also a much easier way to do this with visual block mode: ctrl + v (to enter visual block mode) press j to go down however many lines you need (or with a number like 5j to jump 5 at a time) Shift + I to enter insert mode type the checkbox stuff and when you hit escape it will be inserted on every line you had selected in the visual block

[@lightsite999]

Blown my mind was

[@pluto3531]

ty

[@cozyfog]

You can do the same with ctrl+v for visual block and shift+i to insert

[@thecodebear]

Noice

[@marcosduvannitolarodriguez1933]

Thanks

[@asadanik5987]

You are JavaScript ❤.. difficult to catch you up. Still loving you silently

[@bashbunni]

That is so mean 😭

[@alexfu2422]

Control - v select first character of each line and Shift I to insert - [ ] and hit escape, done. This is more intuitive but more typing.

[@olivierlasne2346]

I have been wondering for so long what that "macro recording" was. When I accidentally type 'q' without the ':' to quit vim 😅

[@sebaszwarc]

Other editors was written by developers to help you, in vim you must help yourself

[@bashbunni]

Vim is a lifestyle

[@sergp7480]

Mix macro with norm and replace - very powerful combo. Nice editing btw 😊

[@bashbunni]

ouuuuuu

[@sergp7480]

@@bashbunni I also recorded short about macro but with norm

[@terry2295]

Using VIM for that is insane to me, like I understand using it for complex scripting but plain text?

[@patrickraedler3656]

Nice, I didn't know that! Thanks for sharing :) Also, which is that font that you are using? Looks really nice!

[@bashbunni]

Blex Mono nerd font :)

[@PofMagicfingers]

Nice!

[@carlossaenz8204]

vim btw

[@ashwiniabhishek1504]

When she started to play the recording, my laptop hung because of program I was running and the video started repeating in strange manner, I though what a video effect she has put to show the replay option, but when it became too monotonous and then I realised my laptop is hung ;).

[@RolexChan]

漂亮😻谢谢☺️

[@saishinnthant4839]

which font do you use in this video?

[@comosaycomosah]

Anddd I somehow end up with 4 boxes in front of the word instead 💀and the 2nd attempt ended up with the boxes going down this time but off placed by one character into each word instead of in front of the word lmao I need practice

[@re1konn]

An easier way if using macros: Record the action that you want on a certain line. That should not include going to the next line. Now, select all the lines you want that action to be repeated on. Type :norm @ and then press enter.

[@nekoill]

Wouldn't it be easier if you first just hit Ctrl+v and then whatever you need to press to get to the end of your list, then hit capital I, type `- [ ]`, hit Esc and be done?

[@bashbunni]

It’s so funny because originally the video included me saying “this is kind of a bad example because I could just use visual block to add these checkboxes, but I want to keep the example as simple as possible” but it made the short too long iirc, so I just decided not to include it. Now I see so many comments being like “but you could just…” and I’m like ahhh I knew it would come!!

[@robertholtz]

Two words for you… multiple cursors.

[@user-me8dk7ds7f]

visual box I think would be easier here.

[@heheitskenny]

Does anyone know what colorscheme is used in the demo here? Thanks

[@bashbunni]

Catppuccin :) the best!

[@darklightnessful]

Norm is faster or visual insert

[@GrandNecro]

i would have done ctrl v and I to insert the columns of text

[@YourAvgjoe]

I use space v to bring up a terminal to test my code. I used to be able to click back into my code then edit. Some way I’ve disabled my trackpad, any advice?

[@oglothenerd]

I use Helix. Also, did you know that the creator of Vim died recently!? 😢

[@victortesla2935]

😳

[@chezchezchezchez]

All this work with Xcode VIM mode?

[@wl4dymir]

You would do this one much faster with a substitute.

[@data.monoid8785]

Ctrl+v -> 5j -> S-i -> enter text (- [ ] ) -> Esc

[@oErebor]

What is this font ?

[@chonkey]

Visual block mode would be faster

[@user-hw3tu2gx3w]

Font name?

[@HoranMustaplot]

What is the name of the font she's using here?

[@bashbunni]

I think it’s BlexMono nerd font - it’s been my fave for a while now

[@irienas]

Please what is the name of 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕥𝕙𝕖𝕞𝕖?

[@shailmurtaza9082]

You already know VIM macros. Why are you here? 😏

[@coolguy69verycool]

I should learn macros, I'd do it with a command like this: ":4,8s/^/- [ ]"

[@aryanmn1569]

a real question (I'm not anti vim). why shouldn't we use multi-cursor like in vscode? where its more powerful? I mean what this get done that multi-cursors won't or does it slower?

[@agfd5659]

In this case, visual block mode insert (which is similar to multi cursor) would make more sense, but there are cases where macros become very useful.

[@bashbunni]

I kept this as a suuuper basic example that can definitely be done in many ways. Macros are overkill here, but for simplicity I decided to use it as an example anyway

[@aryanmn1569]

@@bashbunni it would be nice to see an example which cant be done without multi-cursor, to really feel the power.

[@agfd5659]

@@aryanmn1569 So one example would be: imagine you have a comma separated values file like this: some,thing,hello world,more,stuff yet,another,line containing,imortant,values And you need to capitalize the first letter of all values in the second column like this: some,Thing,hello world,More,stuff yet,Another,line containing,Imortant,values This would be difficult (or maybe even impossible) with multi-cursor. With macros, this is easy: 1) Go to the beginning of the first line. 2) Record the macro into the s register with qsf,lvUq 3) Now apply this macro to every line in the file with :%norm@s And you're done!

[@ChrisCox-wv7oo]

@@aryanmn1569 multicursor is really powerful, no doubt about it. the other day I had to refactor some code. we had several dozen functions that had static local variables and I wanted to pull them all out and make them class members. the variable could be defined anywhere within the function. first line, last line, middle. sometimes there were multiple statics within a single function. I ended up with the macro /static^Mdd^^p^O@q search for static keyword (/static), delete that line(dd), switch to last file which was the header (^^). paste correcting indentation ([p). return to where static was deleted from in cpp (^O). run macro again (@q). it neatly moved all the statics from test.cpp to the last cursor location in test.h. is something like this possible with multicursor?

[@Dimarichek]

What font do you use?

[@bashbunni]

BlexMono nerd font

[@Babbili]

Is there documentations for Vim, i can learn it from

[@bashbunni]

Try :Tutor when you’re in vim/neovim. That one is a full walk through. Also :help has a lot of great docs. There are lots of great docs online for neovim as well. Will make note of this though, might be worth listing off some of the different text-based resources for learning vim and lua

[@Babbili]

@@bashbunni thanks

[@Heart0rHead]

Any modern IDE with multiple caret support will do this faster and easier.

[@chillmelon7894]

Why not just use block?

[@axewellll]

bad example, you don't need macros in this case

[@ErdajtSopjani]

wifey

[@rhymeflakes]

Is this default feature?

[@bhavyakukkar]

yes

[@pranaydeshmukh8207]

What is Vim macros

[@421sap]

God bless you in Jesus' Name Amen ✝️

[@Tanmaydeshpande-nl5jy]

no way you qw and not qq

[@grim.reaper]

I love this 🥹

[@Luanxxxxx]

I don't care that you're pretty, I only followed because of the vim macro I love

[@dogaarmangil]

Big omissions: You didn't say which mode are you starting in, and you aren't showing the status line that indicates the current mode.

[@jiangyz]

Such a cute girl to demonstrate vim! I came out 4 ways to do kind like this by using macro (from the comments and my experience): (Substitute "- [ ] " with "- " to simplify the demo , using q as the macro register.) 1. Repeat Apply qqi-q j@q j@@ 2. Batch Apply qqi-q u vap @q 3. Recursive Apply qqi-j@qq uu @q 4. Range Apply qqi-q u :1,$normal@q

[@RuslanKovtun]

Very very very bad example because Ctrl+V followed by "I- [ ] " will do the same and way easier for this example. Macros are for more complicated things.

[@bashbunni]

Ah yeah I did have a disclaimer about it not being the best example at the beginning of the video originally, but in the interest of keeping the example as simple as possible, I decided to just leave it despite being able to accomplish the same thing with visual block. I don't think that makes it a bad example, just the simplest possible example for how macros work :)