I'd like to run a macro on every line in a selection, rather than totalling up the number of lines in my head. For instance, I might write a macro to transform:

Last, First


First Last

and I'd like it to run on all these lines:

Stewart, John 
Pumpkin, Freddy
Mai, Stefan

Any ideas Vim gurus?

EDIT: This is just an example, obviously this is trivialy regexable, but there are other instances that come up that aren't quite so easy that I'd prefer to use macros.

  • 1
    To be honest, I would probably do this particular task with regex. But the question is still valid for more complex cases. – Jamie Wong Jul 26 '10 at 18:50
  • Why vim? In my opinion sed is more appriopriate. – kokosing Jul 26 '10 at 18:54
  • 8
    @kogut : Why exit your editor to edit your text with a one line regex? – Stephen Jul 26 '10 at 18:56
  • 1
    Ok, You have got the point ;) – kokosing Jul 26 '10 at 20:03

Suppose you had a macro q that ran (and remained) on a single line. Then you could run it on every line in your selection with:

:'<,'>normal @q

(if you already have a group of lines selected, hitting : produces :'<,'> on the command line)

For example, the following macro capitalizes every word but the first on a line:

:let @q="^dwgU$P"

So running it on the following (where the + lines are selected)

 0000: a long long time ago
 0001: in a galaxy far away
+0002: naboo was under an attack
+0003: and i thought me and qui-gon jinn
+0004: could talk the federation in
 0005: to maybe cutting them a little slack.

With the above normal @q command, produces:

 0000: a long long time ago
 0001: in a galaxy far away
 0002: naboo WAS UNDER AN ATTACK
 0005: to maybe cutting them a little slack.
  • 6
    :let @q="^wgU$" – Roger Pate Jul 27 '10 at 10:05
  • @Roger Pate: well, yes if you wanted to golf it :) – rampion Jul 27 '10 at 13:15
  • @rampion: is there a typo in your command? for me it only works like this: :'<,'>normal! @q – oliver Jul 23 '11 at 15:29
  • 2
    @oliver: check your mappings - you might have remapped @q. From :help normal - "If the [!] is given, mappings will not be used." – rampion Jul 23 '11 at 16:11
  • 1
    @rampion: damn it ... you're right! I use yankring and apparently there is a problem with this: ... You cannot execute a macro with ":normal @a". It is still not possible, but you can execute it with ":normal! @a" (from the help docs of yankring) – oliver Jul 23 '11 at 18:00

Select the lines then press : to enter command mode. Vim will automatically fill in '<,'>, which restricts the range to the selected lines. For your example you can use the :s command to do the swap:

:'<,'>s/\(\w\+\), \(\w\+\)/\2, \1/

This will swap two words separated by a comma on every line in the visual selection.

You can also use '< and '> like any other bookmark or line position, e.g. as part of a movement command, so in normal mode d'< will delete from the current cursor position to the start of the first line in the visual selection. The marks remain in effect even if the block is not longer visually highlighted.

If you want to replay a recorded macro on every line the you need to execute the macro with the :normal command. Unfortunately the :normal command does not operate on a range of lines, but you can fix that with the :global command. This runs an :ex command on every line that matches a regex, so you can do this:

:'<,'>g/^/ norm @a


:'<,'>       for every line in the visual block
g/^/         on every line that matches the regex /^/ - i.e. every line
norm         run in normal mode
@a           the macro recorded in a
  • 1
    :help :normal-range – Roger Pate Jul 27 '10 at 10:08
  • This is better than the accepted answer because it supports macros that add new lines. – Jan Warchoł Jun 30 '17 at 9:12
  • @Dave, Kirby Maybe would be better to exchange ^ with . to make the macro run only on lines that has some text, wouldn't? – SergioAraujo Sep 23 '17 at 18:02

You can add the function below to your ~/.vimrc or simply copy it on your browser and running :@+

fun! RunMacroOverSelection(macroname)
    execute "'<,'>normal @". a:macroname
com -nargs=1 Rover :call RunMacroOverSelection(<f-args>)
nnoremap <leader>r :Rover<space>

The advantage is that you can apply any macro on the visual selection. You need to give the macro letter as argument, like:

:Rover a

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