Indeed, I would not recommend disabling q unless you know what it does and tried it a few times.
For a quick demo, try it on this file:
hello world!
here's wolves
what's up with the hackers?
Go to the first line and do:
1. qq starts a macro named 'q'
2. $vbgUj select last word on line, uppercase it, go down one line
3. q to end macro recording
4. @q run the macro
4b. @@ repeats the last macro
4c. 100@q runs the macro 100 times
When you want to do multi-line edits and the columns are not aligned (so block mode, Ctrl+V, doesn't work), this works wonders. You just record whatever you would do on every line plus whatever motions you use to go to the next occurrence, using things like "f|" (find the next pipe symbol) or "/example<Esc>n" (find the next instance of "example"), and then run the macro however many times. If you specify a number of times greater than the file is large, it will automatically stop at end of file, and you can also cancel if it takes too long (Ctrl+C) and undo what it did so far (u).
Alternatively, sed -i s/a/b/ my.txt is much much faster than macros, but macros can be more complex and are often easier to record (since you're just showing the computer what to do in a human way) than trying to regex the line.
I tried recording it for the lazy but asciinema is having issues (server error when uploading).
For a quick demo, try it on this file:
Go to the first line and do: When you want to do multi-line edits and the columns are not aligned (so block mode, Ctrl+V, doesn't work), this works wonders. You just record whatever you would do on every line plus whatever motions you use to go to the next occurrence, using things like "f|" (find the next pipe symbol) or "/example<Esc>n" (find the next instance of "example"), and then run the macro however many times. If you specify a number of times greater than the file is large, it will automatically stop at end of file, and you can also cancel if it takes too long (Ctrl+C) and undo what it did so far (u).Alternatively, sed -i s/a/b/ my.txt is much much faster than macros, but macros can be more complex and are often easier to record (since you're just showing the computer what to do in a human way) than trying to regex the line.
I tried recording it for the lazy but asciinema is having issues (server error when uploading).