Vim Macros: A More Complicated Problem

Here’s a more difficult problem than my previous post on Vim macros: I collected a bunch of links to post on my website using a simple 2-column table:

blogs.perl.org  |http://blogs.perl.org/mt/mt-cp.fcgi?__mode=view&id=3159
Wiki            |http://tinypig.pbworks.com/
Tumblr          |http://tinypigdotcom.tumblr.com/
WordPress       |http://tinypig.wordpress.com/
Perl Monks      |http://www.perlmonks.org/?node=tinypig
GitHub          |https://github.com/tinypigdotcom

My HTML links template I want to add them to is basically this:

<h3>Links</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="">LINK</a><br/></li>
</ul>

Appending the first file to the second, I get this:

<h3>Links</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="">LINK</a><br/></li>
</ul>

blogs.perl.org  |http://blogs.perl.org/mt/mt-cp.fcgi?__mode=view&id=3159
Wiki            |http://tinypig.pbworks.com/
Tumblr          |http://tinypigdotcom.tumblr.com/
WordPress       |http://tinypig.wordpress.com/
Perl Monks      |http://www.perlmonks.org/?node=tinypig
GitHub          |https://github.com/tinypigdotcom

Note the pipes (|) separating the columns. Having these (or some other unique character) make it much easier to work with the data because we can use Vim’s F find command to move to the exact location we need. Also note there should be a blank line at the end of the file so that we can go down successfully and our find on the pipe symbol will fail, ending the recursive macro.

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 pipe symbol
5	0	Go to the beginning of the line
6	3k	Go up three times
7	Y	“Yank” the current line (in this case, the link template line) into the buffer
8	p	Immediately “put” the line right below, effectively duplicating it
9	3j	Go down three times
10	dt|	“Delete to” pipe, which also captures the deleted text into the buffer
11	4k	Go up four times
12	f>f>	Find greater-than symbol, then find the next one
13	p	“Put” the buffer (the data from the first column we deleted 3 steps back)
14	ge	“Go” to the “end” of the previous word
15	l	Go right
16	dt<	Delete to greater-than symbol, effectively removing trailing space
17	0	Go to the beginning of the line
18	4j	Go down four times
19	l	Go right, skipping over the pipe symbol
20	D	Delete the rest of the line (again capturing the text)
21	4k	Go up four times
22	f"	Find next quote symbol in the current line
23	p	“Put” the buffer (data from the second column)
24	0	Go to the beginning of the line
25	4j	Go down four times
26	dd	Delete the current line
27	@q	Add the instruction to start running macro ‘q’ again, creating the recursive call
28	q	Stop recording
29	@q	Actually run macro ‘q’

Here’s what it looks like in practice: