Use VIM macros to move quickly through a file

So let's review some movement commands in VIM.

• hjkl for left up down right
• wbe for jumping between words in a sentence.

Now let's say you have a huge paragraph you're jumping through. The whole thing is on one line, but it's like 200 words long. You want to edit word number 155, but you don't necessarily know it's word #155, you just know it's pretty far along in the paragraph.

How do you get there?

Well, if you're like me, you'll probably start hammering on w, jumping word by word. But then you'll realize "damn, this is going to take a long time" (155 presses, but you're not aware of that).

What's next? Well, you can jump by 10 words, by typing 10w. And you can repeat that by typing 10w10w10w10w10w10w but that also takes a really long time.

So what's the solution?

Macros!!

Macros can be named with any single letter. So first, let's pick a macro name. We'll choose a.

1. Start recording the macro by typing q, then the macro name a
2. Type your macro
3. End the recording by typing q

For the case we just had, where we want to repeat 10w, we would type qa10wq.

Then, to use the macro, we type @a.

And finally, the best part, we can type @@ to repeat the previous macro.

Of course, this can be used for any action you want to repeat.

Hopefully this tip was helpful. Follow me on here or on twitter for more quick tips as they come up.