Advanced Vim registers

Registers in Vim are best thought of as scratch spaces for text, some of which are automatically filled by the editor in response to certain actions. Learning how to use registers fluently has a lot of subtle benefits, although it takes some getting used to because the syntax for using them is a little awkward.

If you’re reasonably fluent with Vim by now, it’s likely you’re already familiar with the basic usage of the 26 named registers, corresponding to the letters of the alphabet. These are commonly used for recording macros; for example, to record a series of keystrokes into register a, you might start recording with qa, and finish with q; your keystrokes could then be executed with @a.

Similarly, we can store text from the buffer itself rather than commands in these registers, by prepending "a to any command which uses a register, such as the c, d, and y commands:

  • "ayy — Read current line into register a.
  • "bP — Paste contents of register b above current line.
  • "cc3w — Change three words, putting the previous three words into register c.

Like many things in Vim, there’s a great deal more functionality to registers for those willing to explore.

Note that here I’ll be specifically ignoring the *, +, and ~ registers; that’s another post about the generally unpleasant business of making Vim play nice with system clipboards. Instead, I’ll be focussing on stuff that only applies within a Vim session. All of this is documented in :help registers.

Capital registers

Yanking and deleting text into registers normally replaces the previous contents of that register. In some cases it would be preferable to append to a register, for example while cherry-picking different lines from the file to be pasted elsewhere. This can be done by simply capitalizing the name of the register as it’s referenced:

  • "ayyReplace the contents of register a with the current line.
  • "AyyAppend the current line to register a.

This works for any context in which an alphabetical register can be used. Similarly, to append to a macro already recorded in register a, we can start recording with qA to add more keystrokes to it.

Viewing register contents

A good way to start getting a feel for how all the other registers work is to view a list of them with their contents during an editing session with :registers. This will show the contents of any register used in the editing session. It might look something like this, a little inscrutable at first:

:registers
--- Registers ---
""   Note that much of it includes
"0   execut
"1   ^J^J
"2   16 Oct (2 days ago)^J^Jto Jeff, Alan ^JHi Jeff (cc Alan);^J^JPlease 
"3   <?php^Jheader("Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8");^J?>^J.^J
"4   ^J
"5   Business-+InternationalTrade-TelegraphicTransfers-ReceivingInternati
"6   ../^J
"7       diff = auto^J    status = auto^J    branch = auto^J    interacti
"8   ^J[color]^J    ui = auto^J    diff = auto^J    status = auto^J    br
"9       ui = true^J
"a    escrow
"b   03wdei^R=2012-^R"^M^[0j
"c   a
"e   dui{<80>kb^[^[
"g   ^[gqqJgqqjkV>JgqqJV>^[Gkkkjohttp://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/^[I[4]: ^[k
"h   ^[^Wh:w^Mgg:w^M^L:w^Mjk/src^Mllhh
"j   jjjkkkA Goo<80>kb<80>kb<80>kbThis one is good pio<80>kbped through a
"-   Note that much of it includes
".    OIt<80>kb<80>kb<80>kbIt might looks <80>kb<80>kb something like thi
":   register
"%   advanced-vim-registers.markdown
"/   Frij

The first column contains the name of the register, and the second its contents. The contents of any of these registers can be pasted into the buffer with "ap, where a is the name of any of them. Note that there are considerably more registers than just the named alphabetical ones mentioned above.

Unnamed register

The unnamed register is special in that it’s always written to in operations, no matter whether you specified another register or not. Thus if you delete a line with dd, the line’s contents are put into the unnamed register; if you delete it with "add, the line’s contents are put into both the unnamed register and into register a.

If you need to explicitly reference the contents of this register, you can use ", meaning you’d reference it by tapping " twice: "". One handy application for this is that you can yank text into the unnamed register and execute it directly as a macro with @".

Man, and you thought Perl looked like line noise.

Black hole register

Another simple register worth mentioning is the black hole register, referenced with "_. This register is special in that everything written to it is discarded. It’s the /dev/null of the Vim world; you can put your all into it, and it’ll never give anything back. A pretty toxic relationship.

This may not seem immediately useful, but it does come in handy when running an operation that you don’t want to clobber the existing contents of the unnamed register. For example, if you deleted three lines into the unnamed register with 3dd with the intent of pasting them elsewhere with p, but you wanted to delete another line before doing so, you could do that with "_dd; line gone, and no harm done.

Numbered registers

The read-only registers 0 through 9 are your “historical record” registers. The register 0 will always contain the most recently yanked text, but never deleted text; this is handy for performing a yank operation, at least one delete operation, and then pasting the text originally yanked with "0p.

The registers 1 through 9 are for deleted text, with "1 referencing the most recently deleted text, "2 the text deleted before that, and so on up to "9.

The small delete register

This read-only register, referenced by "-, stores any text that you deleted or changed that was less than one line in length, unless you specifically did so into some other named register. So if you just deleted three characters with 3x, you’ll find it in here.

Last inserted text register

The read-only register ". contains the text that you last inserted. Don’t make the mistake of using this to repeat an insert operation, though; just tap . for that after you leave insert mode, or have the foresight to prepend a number to your insert operation; for example, 6i.

Filename registers

The read-only register "% contains the name of the current buffer’s file. Similarly, the "# register contains the name of the alternate buffer’s file.

Command registers

The read-only register ": contains the most recently executed : command, such as :w or :help. This is likely only of interest to you if you’re wanting to paste your most recent command into your Vim buffer. For everything else, such as repeating or editing previous commands, you will almost certainly want to use the command window.

Search registers

The read-only register / contains the most recent search pattern; this can be handy for inserting the search pattern on the command line, by pressing Ctrl-R and then / — very useful for performing substitutions using the last search pattern.

Expression register

Here’s the black sheep of the bunch. The expression register = is used to treat the results of arbitrary expressions in register context. What that means in actual real words is that you can use it as a calculator, and the result is returned from the register.

Whenever the expression register is referenced, the cursor is put on the command line to input an expression, such as 2+2, which is ended with a carriage return.

This means in normal mode you can type "=2+2<Enter>p, and 4 will be placed after the cursor; in insert or command mode you can use Ctrl-R then =2+2<Enter> for the same result. If you don’t find this syntax as impossibly awkward as I do, then this may well suit you for quick inline calculations … personally, I’d drop to a shell and bust out bc for this.

Knowing your registers well isn’t as profound a productivity boost as squelching a few of the other Vim anti-patterns, but it can certainly save you some of the annoyance of lost text.

Advanced Vim macros

Vim’s massive command set in both normal and command mode makes the concept of a macro especially powerful. Most Vim users, if they ever use macros at all, will perhaps quickly record an edit to one line, starting with qq and finishing with q, executing with @q, and otherwise never give the concept much thought.

For slightly more advanced Vim users, macros may be more frequently useful, but they perhaps still believe that macros are a niche Vim function unto themselves, and not really open to the deft manipulation of text that pretty much everything else in Vim is.

As is typical in Vim, the rabbit hole of functionality goes much deeper than most users will ever plumb.

Vanilla Vim macros

Suppose I had a plaintext table loaded into a Vim buffer containing the name, subject matter expertise, birth year, and nationality of a few well-known programmers:

Stallman  Richard GNU 1953  USA
Wall  Larry   Perl  1954  USA
Moolenar  Bram  Vim 1961  Netherlands
Tridgell  Andrew  Samba  1967  Australia
Matsumoto  Yukihiro  Ruby  1965  Japan
Ritchie  Dennis  C  1941  USA
Thompson  Ken  Unix  1943  USA

Actually, that’s kind of untidy. Let’s start by formatting it a bit, by running it through Unix’s column tool.

:%!column -t

Stallman   Richard   GNU    1953  USA
Wall       Larry     Perl   1954  USA
Moolenar   Bram      Vim    1961  Netherlands
Tridgell   Andrew    Samba  1967  Australia
Matsumoto  Yukihiro  Ruby   1965  Japan
Ritchie    Dennis    C      1941  USA
Thompson   Ken       Unix   1943  USA

May as well sort it by surname too:

:%!sort -k1

Matsumoto  Yukihiro  Ruby   1965  Japan
Moolenar   Bram      Vim    1961  Netherlands
Ritchie    Dennis    C      1941  USA
Stallman   Richard   GNU    1953  USA
Thompson   Ken       Unix   1943  USA
Tridgell   Andrew    Samba  1967  Australia
Wall       Larry     Perl   1954  USA

That’s better.

Now, suppose we’ve got the task of replacing the fourth column of this table with the approximate age of the person, which we can get naturally enough by sutracting their birth year from the current year. This is a little awkward to do in pure ex, so we’ll record a macro for doing it on one line.

Experimenting a bit, we find that the following works well:

03wdei^R=2012-^R"^M^[0j

Broken down, this does the following:

  • 0 — Move to the start of the line
  • 3w — Skip three words, in this case to the fourth column
  • de — Delete to the end of the word
  • i — Enter insert mode
  • ^R= — Insert the contents of the special = register, which accepts an expression to evaluate
  • 2012-^R"^M — Enter the expression 2012-(birth year) and press Enter (literal ^M), which completes the operation, and inserts the result
  • ^[ — Leave insert mode
  • 0 — Return to the start of the line
  • j — Move down a line

So we record it into a macro a (to stand for “age”, no other reason) as we fix up the first line:

qa03wdei^R=2012-^R"^M^[0jq

Matsumoto  Yukihiro  Ruby   47  Japan
Moolenar   Bram      Vim    1961  Netherlands
Ritchie    Dennis    C      1941  USA
Stallman   Richard   GNU    1953  USA
Thompson   Ken       Unix   1943  USA
Tridgell   Andrew    Samba  1967  Australia
Wall       Larry     Perl   1954  USA

This now means that for each line, we can run the macro by just tapping @a a few times:

Matsumoto  Yukihiro  Ruby   47  Japan
Moolenar   Bram      Vim    51  Netherlands
Ritchie    Dennis    C      71  USA
Stallman   Richard   GNU    59  USA
Thompson   Ken       Unix   69  USA
Tridgell   Andrew    Samba  45  Australia
Wall       Larry     Perl   58  USA

That’s all pretty stock-standard macro stuff that you’ll likely have learned in other tutorials. The only thing that’s slightly voodoo (and certainly not vi-compatible) is the arithmetic done with the special = register. You can read about that in :help @=, if you’re curious.

Repeating Vim macros

As a first very simple hint, if you’re running a macro several times, don’t forget that you can prepend a count to it; in our case, 6@a would have fixed up all the remaining lines. To take advantage of this, it’s good practice to compose your macros so that they make sense when run multiple times; in the example above, note that the end of the macro is moving down onto the next line, ready to run the macro again if appropriate.

Similarly, if you’ve already run a macro once, you can run the same one again by just tapping the @ key twice, @@. This repeats the last run macro. Again, you can prepend a count to this, @a5@@.

The true nature of Vim macros

The registers that hold macros are the same registers that you probably use more frequently for operations like deleting, yanking, and pasting. Running a macro is simply instructing Vim to take the contents of a register and execute them as keystrokes, as if you were actually typing them. Thinking about macros this way has a couple of interesting consequences.

First of all, it means you needn’t restrict yourself to the single-keystroke vi commands for Vim when you compose macros. You can include ex commands as well, for example to run a substitution during a macro:

qb:s/foo/bar/g^Mq
@b

Secondly, and more interestingly, all of the operations that you can apply to registers in general work with what we normally call macros, with the old standards, delete, yank, and paste. You can test this with the example macro demonstrated above, by typing "ap, which will dump the raw text straight into the buffer. Also like other registers, it’ll show up in the output of the :registers command.

All this means is that like everything else in Vim, macros are just text, and all of Vim’s clever tools can be used to work with them.

Editing Vim macros in a buffer

If you’ve used macros even a little bit you’ll be very familiar with how frustrating they are to record. For some reason, as soon as you press qa to start recording a macro into register a, your normal fluency with Vim commands goes out the window and you keep making mistakes that will make the macro unsuitable to apply.

So, don’t compose macros on the fly. Just stop doing it. I recommend that if a macro is more than three keystrokes, you should compose it directly in a scratch Vim buffer so that you can test it iteratively.

Here’s an example using the macro above; suppose I realise partway through writing it that I made a mistake in typing 2011 instead of 2012. I finish recording the rest of the macro anyway, and dump the broken keystrokes into a new scratch buffer:

:enew
"ap

This gives me the contents of the macro in plain text in the buffer:

qa03wdei^R=2011-^R"^M^[0jq

So now all I have to do is change that bad year to 2012, and then yank the whole thing back into register a:

^"ay$

Now I can test it directly with @a on the appropriate file, and if it’s still wrong, I just jump back to my scratch buffer and keep fixing it up until it works.

One potential snag here is that you have to enter keystrokes like Ctrl+R as literal characters, but once you know you can enter any keystroke in Vim literally in insert or command mode by prefixing it with Ctrl+V, that isn’t really a problem. So to enter a literal Ctrl+R in insert mode, you type Ctrl+V, then Ctrl+R.

Running a Vim macro on a set of lines

It’s occasionally handy to be able to run a macro that you’ve got ready on a specific subset of lines of the file, or perhaps just for every line. Fortunately, there’s a way to do this, too.

Using the :normal command, you’re able to run macros from the ex command line:

:normal @a

All it takes is prefixing this with any sort of range definition to allow you to run a macro on any set of lines that you’re able to define.

Run the macro on each line of the whole buffer:

:% normal @a

Between lines 10 and 20:

:10,20 normal @a

On the lines in the current visual selection:

:'<,'> normal @a

On the lines containing the pattern vim:

:g/vim/ normal @a

When you get confident using this, :norm is a nice abbreviation to use.

Moving a Vim macro into a function

For really useful macros of your own devising, it’s occasionally handy to put it into a function for use in scripts or keystroke mappings. Here again the :normal command comes in handy.

Suppose I wanted to keep the age calculation macro defined above for later use on spreadsheets of this kind. I’d start by dumping it into a new buffer:

:enew
"ap

The macro appears as raw text:

03wdei^R=2012-^R"^M^[0j

I prefix it with a :normal call, and wrap a function definition around it:

function! CalculateAge()
    normal 03wdei^R=2012-^R"^M^[0j 
endfunction

Then all I need to do is include that in a file that gets loaded during Vim’s startup, possibly just .vimrc. I can call it directly from ex:

:call CalculateAge()

But given that I wanted it to be a quick-access macro, maybe it’s better to bind it to \a, or whatever your chosen <leader> character is:

nnoremap <leader>a :call CalculateAge()<CR>

Saving a Vim macro

If you want to have a macro always available to you, that is, always loaded into the appropriate register at startup, that can be done in your .vimrc file with a call to let to fill the register with the literal characters required:

let @a='03wdei^R=2012-^R"^M^[0j'

Appending extra keystrokes to a Vim macro

If you just want to tack extra keystrokes onto an existing macro and don’t care to edit it in a Vim buffer, you can do that by recording into it with its capital letter equivalent. So, if you wanted to add more keystrokes into the register b, start recording with qB, and finish with the usual q.

Recursive Vim macros

If you’re crazy enough to need this, and I never have, there’s an excellent Vim Tip for it. But personally, I think if you need recursion in your text processing then it’s time to bust out a real programming language and not Vimscript to solve your problem.

If the issue for which you think you need recursion is running a macro on every line of a buffer with an arbitrary number of lines, then you don’t need recursion; just record a one-line version of the macro and call it with :% normal @a to run it on every line.

Vim macro gotchas

Here are a few gotchas which will save you some frustration if you know about them ahead of time:

  • When you have a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. Don’t try to solve problems with macros when there are better solutions in the ex command set, or available in external programs. See the Vim koans page for a couple of examples.
  • You need to insert keystrokes like Enter as literal Ctrl+M, so that they look like ^M. The convenience abbreviations in mappings, like <CR>, simply don’t work. You’re likely to find yourself chording Ctrl+V a lot.
  • Macros tend to stop, sometimes for apparently no reason and with no warning messages, as soon as they hit some sort of error. One particularly annoying instance of this is when you’re performing several substitutions in a macro, because if it doesn’t find any instances of a pattern it will throw an error and stop executing. You can prevent this by adding the e flag to the substitution call:

    :s/foo/bar/e
    

Thanks to user bairui for suggesting a safer alternative for yanking macro lines from buffers, which I’ve changed. He’s written a whole blog post replying to this one. It’s a good read if you’re interested in going in to even more depth about when to use macros in Vim.