usr_10.txt For Vim version 9.1. Last change: 2025 Nov 09 VIM USER MANUAL by Bram Moolenaar Making big changes In chapter 4 several ways to make small changes were explained. This chapter goes into making changes that are repeated or can affect a large amount of text. The Visual mode allows doing various things with blocks of text. Use an external program to do really complicated things. 10.1 Record and playback commands 10.2 Substitution 10.3 Command ranges 10.4 The global command 10.5 Visual block mode 10.6 Reading and writing part of a file 10.7 Formatting text 10.8 Changing case 10.9 Using an external program Next chapter: usr_11.txt Recovering from a crash Previous chapter: usr_09.txt Using the GUI Table of contents: usr_toc.txt ============================================================================== 10.1 Record and playback commands The "." command repeats the preceding change. But what if you want to do something more complex than a single change? That's where command recording comes in. There are three steps: 1. The "q{register}" command starts recording keystrokes into the register named {register}. The register name must be between a and z. 2. Type your commands. 3. To finish recording, press q (without any extra character). You can now execute the macro by typing the command "@{register}". Take a look at how to use these commands in practice. You have a list of filenames that look like this: stdio.h fcntl.h unistd.h stdlib.h And what you want is the following: #include "stdio.h" #include "fcntl.h" #include "unistd.h" #include "stdlib.h" You start by moving to the first character of the first line. Next you execute the following commands: qa Start recording a macro in register a. ^ Move to the beginning of the line. i#include "<Esc> Insert the string #include " at the beginning of the line. $ Move to the end of the line. a"<Esc> Append the character double quotation mark (") to the end of the line. j Go to the next line. q Stop recording the macro. Now that you have done the work once, you can repeat the change by typing the command "@a" three times. The "@a" command can be preceded by a count, which will cause the macro to be executed that number of times. In this case you would type: 3@a MOVE AND EXECUTE You might have the lines you want to change in various places. Just move the cursor to each location and use the "@a" command. If you have done that once, you can do it again with "@@". That's a bit easier to type. If you now execute register b with "@b", the next "@@" will use register b. If you compare the playback method with using ".", there are several differences. First of all, "." can only repeat one change. As seen in the example above, "@a" can do several changes, and move around as well. Secondly, "." can only remember the last change. Executing a register allows you to make any changes and then still use "@a" to replay the recorded commands. Finally, you can use 26 different registers. Thus you can remember 26 different command sequences to execute. USING REGISTERS The registers used for recording are the same ones you used for yank and delete commands. This allows you to mix recording with other commands to manipulate the registers. Suppose you have recorded a few commands in register n. When you execute this with "@n" you notice you did something wrong. You could try recording again, but perhaps you will make another mistake. Instead, use this trick: G Go to the end of the file. o<Esc> Create an empty line. "np Put the text from the n register. You now see the commands you typed as text in the file. {edits} Change the commands that were wrong. This is just like editing text. 0 Go to the start of the line. "ny$ Yank the corrected commands into the n register. dd Delete the scratch line. Now you can execute the corrected commands with "@n". (If your recorded commands include line breaks, adjust the last two items in the example to include all the lines.) APPENDING TO A REGISTER So far we have used a lowercase letter for the register name. To append to a register, use an uppercase letter. Suppose you have recorded a command to change a word to register c. It works properly, but you would like to add a search for the next word to change. This can be done with: qC/word<Enter>q You start with "qC", which records to the c register and appends. Thus writing to an uppercase register name means to append to the register with the same letter, but lowercase. This works both with recording and with yank and delete commands. For example, you want to collect a sequence of lines into the a register. Yank the first line with: "aY Now move to the second line, and type: "AY Repeat this command for all lines. The a register now contains all those lines, in the order you yanked them. ============================================================================== 10.2 Substitution find-replace The ":substitute" command enables you to perform string replacements on a whole range of lines. The general form of this command is as follows: :[range]substitute/from/to/[flags] This command changes the "from" string to the "to" string in the lines specified with [range]. For example, you can change "Professor" to "Teacher" in all lines with the following command: :%substitute/Professor/Teacher/ Note: The "