Fixing Multiple Lines with Vim Macros

Sometimes I have a tedius code change where I have to perform the same task on multiple lines in vim and I can’t use ‘.’ because each line is a little different or the changes are too complicated. In this situation, I use a recursive macro in vim.

Here, I started with a list of items that I want to turn into a dispatch table - the code itself isn’t important here, it’s the transformation that I want to illustrate:

my %actions = (
    'start_shopping',
    'add_item',
    'remove_item',
    'use_coupon',
    'checkout',
);

Step	Keys	Meaning
1	qqq	Start and immediately stop recording macro into buffer ‘q’, to empty it
2	qq	Start recording a macro into buffer ‘q’
3	0	Go to the beginning of the line (always start there, if possible, for consistency)
4	f'	Find the next single quote (always start with a find. That way, in the infinite loop we are creating, when it fails the loop will end)
5	l	go right to get to first “real” character
6	yw	Yank the word
7	$	go to end of line
8	P	Put (before the comma)
9	F'	Find the previous single quote
10	x	delete it
11	i	start inserting
12	<SPACE>=><SPACE>\&	(literal characters to insert)
13	<ESC>	Escape, leaving insert mode
14	F'	Find the previous
15	x	delete it
16	0	Go to the beginning of the line
17	j	Go down a line
18	@q	Add the instruction to start running macro ‘q’ again, creating the recursive call
19	q	Stop recording
20	@q	Actually run macro ‘q’

If you have made a mistake and it starts going haywire (this happens to me once in a while) just <CTRL>-c and <ESCAPE> and u for undo and it should go back to the way it was before you ran the macro.

Here’s what it looks like in practice:

Note: I have this line in my .vimrc file:

map z @qz

Since I don’t use z’s default functionality, instead I have it run @q on an infinite loop which allows me to skip step 18 from the example and then step 20 just becomes “z”.

For this next group of commands, I’m going to use the same concept to align all the =>. The block must begin with the line where => is furthest to the right. If it doesn’t belong there, you can always put it there to align it and then move it back to its place afterward. We’ll start on the second line this time since the first line is already positioned correctly.

Step	Keys	Meaning
1	qqq	Start and immediately stop recording macro into buffer ‘q’, to empty it
2	qq	Start recording a macro into buffer ‘q’
3	0	Go to the beginning of the line
4	f=	Find the next =
5	50i<SPACE><ESC>	Insert 50 spaces to make sure it’s long enough
6	0	Go to the beginning of the line
7	k	Go up
8	f=	Find the next =
9	j	Go down
10	dw	“Delete word” in this case will delete to the next non-space
11	0	Go to the beginning of the line
12	j	Go down a line
13	@q	Add the instruction to start running macro ‘q’ again, creating the recursive call
14	q	Stop recording
15	@q	Actually run macro ‘q’

Here’s what it looks like in practice:

Credit to Hongleong for the qqq emptying idea (there is much more info at that link regarding recursive vim macros)

For routinely aligning text in vim, I found this video to be extremely helpful.

Just in case that disappears, I have copied two of the links included there: the Tabular plugin and a macro which uses it.

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